Gorton and Denton: a perpective

 

Imagine being called Goodwin but being such a bad loser? This week’s by-election in Gorton and Denton in Manchester was initially portrayed in the British media as being a contest between Labour and Reform, with the expectation that Reform would coast to an easy victory. In recent days as the Greens pulled ahead in the polls, the by-election was described as a three way contest which was too close to call.

In the event, the vote was won handsomely by the Greens, not only did they win, they crushed both Labour and Reform, winning an impressive 14,980 votes, 40.7% of all votes cast, representing a swing of 26.4% from Labour to Greens. Reform’s Matt Goodwin trailed a long way behind on 10,578, 28.7%, with Labour coming in a poor third on 9,364, 25.4%. Turnout was almost the same as in 2024’s general election. The result was a disaster for Labour, which has held the seat since the 1930s. However it was also very poor for the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, who were reduced to 706 and 653 votes respectively, losing their candidates’ deposits.

Similarly to the recent Senedd by-election in Caerffili which was won by Plaid Cymru, the Greens confounded the predictions of a British media which relentlessly pumps out Reform talking points. Caerffili and Gorton and Denton both tell us that Reform can be defeated. The Manchester by-election was as much a referendum on Nigel Farage as it was on Keir Starmer. Both these blights on British politics lost heavily. The Greens stood on a platform of hope not hate, Reform stood on a platform of hate not hope while Labour stood on a platform of both those things being the same.

Just as we saw in Caerffili, in Gorton and Denton, the polling companies significantly over-estimated the level of support for Reform, and underestimated the willingness of the electorate to vote tactically in order to keep Reform out. Both these factors bode well for the Scottish and Welsh elections in May. Reform’s policies and the dregs of the Tory party which infest Farage’s party are anathema to the great majority of their populations, and indeed to the population of the wider UK as a whole.

Labour’s response to its defeat was just what we have come to expect from Starmer. He briefly acknowledged that the result was “disappointing” then quickly moved on to droning on in his middle managerial style about how he was focused on change and delivering blah blah blah, but by that point I had mentally switched off. As would most of his listeners.

The response of Reform to its trouncing at the hands of the Greens was far more telling. Reform is very on brand for the English nationalist exceptionalism the party represents. Its members may be gloating and entitled winners but they are bad losers. Reform’s spokesbigots would have us believe that they lost because of “family voting” “coercion” and “sectarianism.” According to Reform, Muslims in Gorton and Denton are so sectarian that they voted for a woman in a traditionally male job (the new Green MP was a plumber) who stood for a party led by a gay Jewish man. Reform is also putting out the unfounded allegation that the vote was marred by family members coercing others in their families to vote against Reform. Their line is that Gorton and Denton is chock full of British Muslims who long to vote for a party that wants to ban mosque building and habitually blows Islamophobic dog whistles, but were prevented from doing so by family elders. Yeah, that makes sense.

Back in the real world, Reform lost because people are revolted by its hatred, divisiveness, its sadism, and see through its lies about standing up for working class people when the only interests it represents are those of its multi-millionaire donors. However, like the American Republicans, Reform cannot accept that its populism is not that popular and only accepts the outcome of the democratic process when it gets a result to its liking. This is a warning sign of what would happen should Reform ever get its authoritarian paws on the levers of power in Westminster. The election which takes Reform into office could well be the last democratic election in the UK for a very long time. As is famously said, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

But, as with Caerffili, the Gorton and Denton result is heartening and hopeful. Despite the best efforts of the BBC and the British media, the rise of Reform is not inevitable, the far right can be defeated, there are signs that the true level of support is overstated in the polls and there is a willingness in the electorate to vote tactically in order to keep Reform out.

With this victory the English and Welsh Greens have established themselves as the main opposition on the left to the Labour party. If they succeed in translating this success into victories at the next Westminster general election then we could see the welcome prospect of a large and significant contingent of Green MPs in Westminster. That’s highly significant for hopes of Scottish independence as the English and Welsh Greens support the right of Scotland and Wales to independence. The racism and scaremongering of Reform can be defeated by progressive politics standing for hope, inclusivity, respect, and compassion.

Of course, by-elections are special and this result certainly does not mean that the Greens’ leader Zack Polanski is on track to become the next Prime Minister, but this election is highly significant and marks a watershed. It significantly increases the chances that, following the next Westminster general election, there will be a large and influential bloc of MPs in favour of Scottish and Welsh independence. 

The Labour party may now be forced to start to pay attention to the left and cease its disastrous appeasement of Farage. This pivot, if it happens, will come too late to help Labour in Scotland and Wales in May. Labour will go into the May election weighed down by the baggage of Starmer while the SNP and the Scottish Greens will be best placed to benefit from tactical voting aimed at keeping the horror show of Reform out of office.

After the Gorton and Denton by election, we have a reason to hope that the corner has been turned, we can defeat the far right. But it looks as if it will be done without much help from Labour.

The result in Gorton and Denton was an entirely predictable disaster for the Labour Party. It is a catastrophe long in the making, and it lies squarely at the feet of those who never tire of telling us they have “changed the party”. In 2019, by no means a good year for Labour, the party is estimated to have won this constituency with a notional 67.2 percent or 30,814 votes. This has collapsed to just 25 percent, taking a mere 9,363 votes. Is this the slick election winning machine the apparatchiks around the Prime Minister have built?

People are right to wonder whether the result is the inevitable consequence of ostracising and smearing activists and voters, of failing to deliver meaningful change for the millions who are desperate for it, and of trying to recreate a 1990s tribute act complete with its sleaziest operatives. When they “changed the party” they told millions of people they were no longer welcome, worse they smeared them as unfit to participate in politics at all. Even today, after a crushing defeat to a party firmly to the left, people are refusing to learn the lessons. According to them, Gorton and Denton is a unique seat so you cannot draw conclusions, people simply cannot feel the change yet, and results like these are normal mid-term. There is nothing normal about this.

People are clamouring for answers from those at the top. Why did they block the most popular Labour politician in England from standing? Who signed off the decision to invent a tactical voting company in the middle of the campaign? Who was responsible for a despicable advertising van driving round suggesting our daughters would be used for legal prostitution under the Greens? A huge failure of this leadership is its inability to listen to ordinary people. Many are talking about the existential threat to the Labour Party itself. This election should prompt a serious reckoning for the man at the top, but there is nothing so far that suggests he or his aides are listening.

Reform plays the race card

 

Earlier today (February 23rd) Reform UK’s Home affairs spokes-bigot, the millionaire Zia Yusuf, announced his party’s plans for the immigration system should we be unfortunate enough to see Reform UK take power after the next Westminster General Election. Which, due to Westminster’s outdated first-past-the-post voting system could allow Farage and his minions to win a crushing majority in the Commons on as little as one third of the popular vote. Should this transpire, there would be virtually no checks and balances in the British political system to limit Farage’s exercise of power. Think Trump, think Farage.

Reform’s plans for immigration are every bit as cruel and petty as you might have feared. A Reform UK government would create an agency, modelled on Trump’s paramilitary thugs of ICE, which would aim to deport hundreds of thousands of people, including many who arrived in the UK through recognised and governmentally accepted routes. Who have obeyed all laws, abided by all the Byzantine settlement rules and regulations imposed by the Home Office, and paid the UK Government thousands of pounds in visa fees.

One of the nastiest aspects of these plans is that Reform intends to abolish Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) status, and replace it with a five year visa for which only those earning more than £68,000 a year would be eligible. Holders of this visa would not be entitled to treatment on the NHS or to claim any benefits. This is more draconian than even Trump’s immigration policy and it would make the UK one of the very few states anywhere in the world without a visa category providing for the permanent residency of foreign nationals who have met stringent visa conditions.

There are an estimated 430,000 people living in the UK with ILR, many of whom have lived in the UK for decades, are raising families and have built their lives here. Reform’s vile plans throw them and their families into chaos and uncertainty.

As is typical of Reform UK propaganda, the party spreads lies and false information about foreign citizens resident in the UK. One of Reform’s most common lies is that immigrants are only in the UK for benefits handouts. This is categorically untrue as even a modicum of research shows. Those in receipt of ILR can claim benefits and use the NHS freely but they can only do so after having proven that they can support themselves without recourse to public funds for at least five years. Only 2.7% of Universal Credit claimants are ILR holders, a third of whom are in employment, hardly the epidemic of foreign benefits scroungers Farage would have us believe in.

Migrants who come to the UK on family visas, because they are the spouses or family members of British citizens, are not entitled to benefits and may only use the NHS after paying an NHS surcharge to the Home Office on top of their visa fees. This charge is currently £1,035 per year for most applicants, meaning that those on a 5 year pathway to ILR – which the Labour government is planning to abolish and replace with a ten year wait – will have to pay a total of £5175 to the Home Office on top of their visa fees.  Applicants have to pay this surcharge even if they are paying UK tax and National Insurance. The surcharge must also be paid for each dependant child on the visa. For a family with two children this increases the total cost over a 5 year pathway to ILR to an eye watering £15,525.

Additionally, applicants must demonstrate that they meet the earnings threshold set by the Home Office, which is currently £29,000 annually per applicant . The income threshold is higher if the couple have dependent children. The main visa applicant must show evidence of earning an additional annual income of £3,800 (for the first child applicant) and £2,400 (for all subsequent child applicants), in addition to the £29,000 per annum minimum income requirement.

The visa applicants must also prove that they are resident in the UK, have suitable accommodation and are of good character. If the applicant is from a non-English speaking country they must submit proof of competence in written and spoken English. Technically, they could submit proof of competence in written and spoken Welsh or Scottish Gaelic instead.

While you can apply yourself, the complexity of the process is such that it’s advisable to use the services of a good immigration lawyer. If your application fails you don’t get your visa fee back. Using an immigration lawyer can add £1000 or more to each of the minimum of three applications or renewals you’ll have to make in order to get ILR. At each step you have to shell out thousands of pounds and submit reams of paperwork. The application for ILR costs £3029 but you don’t have to pay the NHS surcharge.

Those who have already successfully negotiated all of this and granted ILR, might have thought that that was the end of it. They had gone through a gruelling, stressful, and expensive process and finally got permanent residency. 

And then they hear that Farage is planning to abolish ILR status and replace it with a five year visa which would be financially out of reach to the great majority of people. Many such people could not risk pinning all their hopes on the Reform UK bubble bursting and keeping their fingers crossed that they would not become the party of government in Westminster following the next General Election. The peace of mind and security that so many families had worked so hard and spent so much to achieve is suddenly whipped away. Hundreds of thousands of law abiding and hard working people with ILR have paid thousands of pounds to the Home Office, obeyed all the rules, cleared every hurdle, only for right wing British nationalists to go – HaHa! We’ve changed the rules, suckers.

So many have been, are being, forced to take an additional step and submit an application for British citizenship. This costs an additional £3700 including lawyer fees. Some affected will be able to scrape the money together to take this final step, but not everyone will. Those families are now facing very uncertain futures, dreading the prospect of ICE style raids on British towns and cities, sweeping up hard working law abiding people for the “crime” of being foreign. That’s the dystopian fascist Britain that could be in store if our own mini-Trump, Nigel Farage, gets in. Think about this when elections approach.

Not the best of birthdays for Andrew

The biggest news story today is one we can only talk around, not directly about, at the moment. The King’s brother, the allegedly sweat-free Andrew, will be sweating buckets today, after being arrested and taken into custody by Thames Valley Police on charges of misconduct in public office. This is a serious offence, and if found guilty he could potentially be facing years in prison. However, colour me cynical, but we all know that won’t happen. The British establishment tends to look after its own and there is no one more establishment than the King’s brother. Like everyone else who is arrested, of course, he is to be presumed innocent until proven guilty and Mountbatten-Windsor has always strongly denied any wrong-doing. Come on, admit it, you don't believe him either.

Documents released as part of the Epstein files appear to show that the former prince had passed confidential UK Government documents to his sex-trafficking paedophile friend. Whether Mountbatten-Windsor received any cash or favours in return for doing so, had he indeed done so, will be the central topic of the current police investigation. He has become the first person to be arrested in connection with the information released in the Epstein files. Donald Trump, who is mentioned in the files released so far many times, and who has been alleged to have been involved in some particularly disgusting and revolting crimes, continues to be protected by the Republican Party.

As this story unfolds, the spotlight will inevitably shift to the behaviour of the King and his late mother, who enabled and protected Andrew for decades. For all their efforts to distance themselves now, efforts which will be ably assisted by the full weight of the British media, the entire Royal family will be held accountable by the public and the reputational damage to an already discredited institution could be (I hope) significant.

This story goes to the heart of corruption, British style. The UK likes to pretend that it is not corrupt like Russia, Hungary, or countries like Nigeria, where senior government officials routinely use their positions to rake off millions and where even minor bureaucrats and police officers can be bribed with cash to expedite an application for planning permission for a property extension or to turn a blind eye to a traffic ticket.

Yet the UK is a deeply corrupt polity. The entire British political system is rooted in corruption: corruption which is entirely legal and within the rules. British political corruption manifests itself in the form of donations by wealthy individuals and companies to parties, politicians, and think tanks which do not have to reveal the sources of their funding. We are expected to believe that these donations are made out of sheer altruism and the goodness of the donors’ hearts, showering favoured politicians and parties and mostly right wing think tanks with hundreds of thousands of pounds with no expectation of anything in return. As my dear old granny always noted, you don’t get to be rich by being a nice person, and millionaires do not shower their cash on politicians and think tanks out of an excess of niceness.

These donations and the network of think tanks which they foster, have been responsible for shifting the entirety of British politics sharply to the right over the past few decades so that “common sense” in British politics is now routinely defined as policies which act in the interests of the rich and well-connected. So the reckless bankers who were responsible for the financial crash in 2008 got away scot free while the poor were blamed for the greed of the rich. And, instead of sanctions and safeguards being put in place to penalise the individuals and companies responsible and who had profited from the financial havoc they had caused, we got a decade and a half of austerity and the devastation of public services, the consequences of which we still live with today.

We see British corruption in the revolving door of lucrative appointments doled out to the cronies and associates of government figures. A case in point is Gordon Brown’s decision to give Peter Mandelson a peerage and bring him back into government despite Mandelson already having been sacked twice from ministerial positions and being dogged with controversy and allegations of corrupt behaviour throughout his time as the UK’s EU Commissioner. Starmer then compounded and condoned Mandelson’s behaviour by appointing him to the important post of British Ambassador to the USA, despite knowing that Mandelson had continued to associate with Jeffrey Epstein after the latter had served a prison sentence for sex offences involving a minor.

The entire House of Lords is the embodiment of British political corruption. In the UK a politician with the favour of the British establishment can never fail. Even if roundly rejected by the public at the ballot box, he or she could be granted a peerage and will be able to continue to be supported by public funds for the rest of their life while influencing and helping to shape government policy free from the irritation of ever having to be democratically accountable. 

From the corruption of the first-past-the-post system, which gives Keir Starmer almost unlimited power on a mere one third of the popular vote, to the back scratching and favours upon which the practice of political donations rests, the sunshine rest home for time serving politicians that is the House of Lords, the entire Westminster political edifice rests upon foundations of corruption. Westminster cannot be reformed as its corruption is not a bug, it’s a feature. It can only be replaced. We can replace it with a written constitution which bans political donations greater than £2000, which has laws to ensure transparency in the funding of think tanks, which has a press regulator who guarantees that the media is broadly representative of the public it purports to serve, and which ends the farcical pageant of inherited titles and privilege. And what are the chances of that happening?

Jim Ratcliffe opens his mouth and spews racism

Elderly billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, the UK’s own racist granddad, moved to the tax haven of Monaco in 2020 in order to avoid paying his fair share of taxes. He’s doubtless one of those English people living abroad who considers himself an ‘expat’ and not an immigrant. It’s equally likely that he doesn’t speak much French in his daily life and has done the square root of bugger all to integrate into the local community in the country in which he is a migrant. None of this however, stops Jim from pontificating in an interview with Sky News about how “the UK has been colonised by immigrants”.

We should pause for a second to appreciate that a member of the British establishment has finally recognised that colonialisation is a bad thing. However we must also pause to gasp at the hypocritical audacity of a tax evading migrant like Jim having the unmitigated gall to complain that hard working people in poorly paid jobs, people who pay far more of their income in taxes than Jim does, are the real root of Britain’s problems, and not greedy billionaires like him who refuse to pay their fair share in taxes to support the public services and pay for the education and training of the workers who made him rich.

The problem with the UK, Jim, isn’t a Filipina care worker who looks after elderly people with dementia, a Pakistani train guard, or an Iraqi Kurdish delivery driver, it’s the likes of you. The real problem with the UK is the greed, avarice and entitlement of billionaires like Jim who believe that all of society should be structured in a way that facilitates Jim sucking up more and more money like a cocaine addict hoovering lines of Bolivian marching powder up their nose. 73% of immigrants in the UK are working and paying a greater percentage of their income in tax than Ratcliffe does.

Ratcliffe, who has an estimated wealth of £17 billion, also took a pop at people on benefits. Ratcliffe’s businesses have received millions of pounds in public money including a £120 million subsidy for the Grangemouth chemical plant which he later closed. The British Government has also given him a £600 million guarantee in order to build the biggest petrochemical plant in Europe, near Antwerp in Belgium. The enormous petrochemical plant has been condemned as a “carbon bomb” by environmental campaigners. The government has also committed some £600 million to improve transport and infrastructure around Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United, owned by a certain Jim Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe complains about benefits claimants, while benefiting from hundreds of millions of pounds in public money, provided by a government which he moved to Monaco in order to avoid paying taxes to. 38% of those in receipt of Universal Credit are in work, their benefits are effectively a subsidy to employers who do not pay a living wage.

It’s scarcely surprising that polling identifies immigration as one of the issues which most concern voters, the British media bangs on about it incessantly and in lurid and dramatic terms. Meanwhile we have a Labour government in Westminster whose idea of challenging the race baiting immigration scaremongering of Reform UK is to agree with them.

Interventions like Ratcliffe’s don’t help to bring clarity or objectivity despite his later half hearted – I’m sorry if you were offended - half-arsed sorry-not-sorry and his claim it was important to discuss the need for controlled immigration. Ratcliffe’s statement was based on a platform of misinformation. He falsely asserted that the population of the UK increased from 58 million in 2020 to 70 million now – an increase of 12 million, an increase which he implied was due to immigration. This is a ludicrously false claim: in 2020 the population of the UK was 67 million, the current population is 69.3 million, the increase since 2020 owes as much to natural population growth as to immigration. The population of the UK was 58 million in 1995, over thirty years ago.

It suits Ratcliffe just fine when politicians focus on immigration because that means they’re not talking about the ever widening gulf between the richest and the rest of us and billionaires like him who suck on the teat of public subsidy while moving to Monaco to avoid paying his fair share of taxes. If our media gave even half the publicity to the grasping greed and hypocrisy of billionaires like Ratcliffe and the ever yawning chasm between the richest and ordinary workers, the UK would be a socialist republic by now. And that is, of course, precisely why they don’t do that but instead feed us a diet of scaremongering about migrants, upon whom we are going to rely more and more as the birth rate drops below replacement level. Farage and his ilk have already caused the UK untold economic and political damage with Brexit, with the help of the British media they look set to compound the damage with their racist fixation on immigration.

Cymru a’r Albarn am byth

The well known traditional curse, “May you live in interesting times” is often attributed to an ancient Chinese text, although there is no evidence for this. Be that as it may, it cannot be denied that we are cursed with living through interesting times. You may remember that Keir Starmer was elected to head a Labour government with a landslide majority, albeit on a mere one third of the popular vote. That happened not two years ago but we are currently facing the alarming prospect that the change Starmer promised will be to usher in a far right English nationalist government in Westminster in 2029. In the shorter term, Labour looks as though it will be facing the hitherto unthinkable loss of Wales in May’s Senedd election.

Labour has reigned dominant in Wales since the 1920s. Far more than what happens in May’s elections in Scotland, the English local authorities where elections have not been postponed, or even the upcoming Gorton and Denton by election, the result in Wales will be pivotal. Not merely because it could deliver a devastating psychological blow to Starmer’s increasingly shaky grasp on the Labour leadership (some would say he's only retained his position so that he can be the fallguy for lousy election results), but far more importantly because it could represent the first domino to fall, setting in motion a chain of events leading to the end of the so-called United Kingdom as it is currently constituted.

In Wales, Plaid Cymru has successfully positioned itself as the left of centre party best placed to defeat Reform UK. Reform UK has been successful in attracting disillusioned voters who feel left out and let down by the political system. It’s a con trick, of course. Reform is a vehicle for the same wealthy and right wing interests which passed the blame for 2008’s financial crash onto working class people, the poor and the marginalised. However for every individual who is seduced by Reform’s toxic brand of migrant hating snake oil, two are repulsed by it.

Unlike in Scotland where the SNP are weighted down by the baggage of over a decade and a half in government, Plaid have never been a party of government, although they have propped up Labour administrations. This means that they can present themselves as fresh, new, and representing change in a way that is very difficult for the SNP. By positioning itself as the only party which could defeat Farage’s goons, Plaid was able to snatch victory from Reform in the recent Caerffili by election, much to the chagrin of the British media, which had been gearing itself up for a Reform UK breakthrough story, only to discover that the real story was the much more disappointing – at least for the right wing British media – story of the breakthrough of a Welsh independence party.

Although the polls do not suggest that Plaid is on track to form a majority government, according to one recent poll, Plaid and the Greens could possibly do well enough to form a majority coalition government. Like Plaid, the Greens in Wales support Welsh independence and the right of the people of Wales to a referendum on the issue.

It’s difficult to overstate just how seismic such a result would be. Labour has already priced in their loss in Scotland in May. No one, less so Anas Sarwar after his anti-Starmer comments recently, really expects that Scotland will have a Labour first minister after May. It’s also important to remember that Scotland’s reputation as a Labour bastion is historically a relatively recent phenomenon. In the 1950s it was the Tories who dominated in Scottish Westminster elections. In the 1959 Westminster general election in Scotland the Tories took 50.1% of the popular vote and won 36 seats, Labour won 38 seats on 46.7% of the vote. It was only in the 1960s and 70s that Labour took a decisive lead over the Conservatives. In contrast, Wales has been Labour territory since the 1920s. Labour has continued to win most Westminster seats in Wales since the 1922 General Election  and has formed the Welsh Government ever since the Senedd was established in 1999.

The loss of Wales would be a dagger in the heart of Labour in a way the humiliation of Anas Sarwar never could be, and, of course,  Keir Starmer will get the blame for it. Such a result would mean that both Scotland and Wales are administered by governments which have no confidence in the Westminster system, and these could well be joined by Northern Ireland next year after the Stormont elections due in May 2027. That triples the pressure on Westminster on the constitutional issue of national autonomy and makes it harder to ignore.

The pressure on Starmer will become intense. He will have to acknowledge that his strategy of appeasement of Reform UK is not working. It does nothing to placate Reform voters and merely alienates those for whom Reform UK is anathema. Labour’s complacency in the face of the threat from the far right is stupid. However, given the recent blocking of Andy Burnham from standing in the Gorton and Denton by election, it seems that the Labour right, which has the party in a death grip, is more terrified by the centrism which Burnham represents than it is by the rise of the far right. So it’s certainly not going to have an appetite for the decisive move to the left and the rapprochement with Europe which is needed to stem the loss of Labour’s traditional voters. In Wales, such voters might be ripe for being hoovered up by the Welsh Greens, a party with a positive view of Welsh independence. Cymru a'r Alban am byth.

My belated predictions for 2026......................

 Here's something I wrote just before last Xmas but never got around to posting. I think it's still got a bit of life in it, even though the politics are fluid. Here it is - unedited from the original.

Making predictions in politics is a mug’s game, particularly if those predictions concern a year ahead. It has famously been said that a week is a long time in politics, so a year must be the equivalent of a geological epoch. All sorts of unforeseen events could transpire between now and the end of next year. But in the full knowledge that I could easily be proven wrong, which is certainly not the worst thing in the universe, I’m going to stick my neck out and make two predictions about 2026, one of which I am reasonably confident about, the other is really just a gut feeling.

So with those caveats in mind, my first prediction is that by this time next year, Keir Starmer will no longer be the Prime Minister and the leader of the Labour party.

It was always evident to any observer of the British political scene that once he became Prime Minister, Keir Starmer would quickly become very unpopular. I said so myself in this blog ages ago (I think), so I've got at least one prediction correct. What was far less obvious was the extent to which Starmer would destroy public support for the Labour party. Even those of us, like me, who had a low opinion of Starmer to begin with, could not have foreseen just how spectacularly bad he’d be as Prime Minister. It's turned out that Starmer is to being Prime Minister as GB News is to balanced and impartial broadcasting.

Starmer has presided over a collapse in support for his party which has not been seen in British politics since the implosion of the Liberal party in the early decades of the last century. 

In Wales, which has been a Labour fiefdom for over a hundred years, Labour faces the likelihood of a historic and humiliating rout, losing control of the Senedd to Plaid Cymru (Cymru am byth says I) and seeing the possibility of Welsh independence move squarely into the centre of Welsh politics, in the same way that independence has been the defining issue in Scottish politics for over a decade and a half. Anglo-British nationalism cannot solve the problems its far right proponents claim it’s the answer to, because it is a creature of the same forces which created those problems in the first place. However it’s well funded by the super rich in whose interests it operates and enjoys the benefit of an extensive media ecosystem from which left wing voices are largely excluded.

Labour is also facing a series of local elections in England on the same day as the Scottish and Welsh elections. The question is not whether Labour will do badly, the question is just how badly it will do. In May next year Starmer will pay the electoral price for selling out the soul of what was once a left wing party and surrendering it to the corporate interests which it was originally founded to protect working class people from. That’s the real betrayal which so called Blue Labour represents. There is already considerable disquiet on Labour’s back benches with the gross ineptitude of Starmer’s leadership.

This ineptitude is not purely presentational as Starmer’s apologists would like to believe, it shows itself in Starmer’s policy choices. His assault on the disabled is unconscionable from a supposedly Labour government and has predictably failed to placate a right wing whose politics are based on blaming the poor for the sins of the rich. His attacks on immigration have not silenced the far right: they have emboldened and empowered it. His equivocation on closer ties with the EU has only encourage the right to go even further.

We are now facing the hitherto unthinkable prospect that the next British Government will take the UK out of the ECHR, opening the way to a bonfire of civil rights and liberties. Yet from former human rights lawyer Starmer there has not been a single word in defence of the ECHR.

All the simmering discontent with Starmer within the Labour party will come to a head following May’s elections when the party is likely to suffer a defeat of such magnitude that there can be no recovery from and Labour will be staring at the prospect of a historic annihilation at the next Westminster general election.

The events of May 2026 will force the self-preservation instincts of Labour back benchers to kick in and the current simmering of discontent with Starmer and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney – a man who is nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is – will boil over and Starmer will be left to deal with open rebellion within the Parliamentary Labour Party. 

Unlike the Tories, Labour lacks a clear mechanism for removing a party leader, so following a summer of rebellions which will increase in strength and frequency, Starmer will see that the writing is on the wall and will stand down as party leader by next year’s Labour party conference. If he does not, he’ll preside at a party conference over which he’s clearly lost control. One way or another, I can’t see him surviving until the end of next year.

My second prediction concerns across the pond. Opinion polling strongly suggests that the US Republicans are facing a political hammering at the mid-term elections. Trump is growing increasingly erratic, indeed, deranged, and he won’t accept defeat gracefully, or at all. His mental and physical decline is accelerating, and while I’m less confident in this prediction than I am in predicting Starmer’s defenestration in 2026, I think it’s highly likely that Trump may not make it to the end of 2026.

There can be no doubt that Trump is suffering from dementia, on top of his pre-existing idiocy and malignant narcissist personality disorder. Despite the best efforts of his sycophants to cover up his failing health, the point is rapidly approaching when this will no longer be possible.  Doctors don’t give a patient repeated MRI scans and cognitive tests if they suspect a diagnosis of dementia, they do so when dementia has already been diagnosed and they are tracking its inexorable progress. Trump not only displays many of the symptoms of dementia -  confabulation, his peculiar leaning stance, falling asleep in public, nonsensical word salads, disinhibition, aggression and a family history of dementia. His father’s dementia is well documented. To be honest, I don’t have an issue with Trump falling asleep in public, the problem is that he wakes back up again.

The bruising on Trump’s hands is not due to him shaking hands so often, a nonsensical and intelligence insulting excuse from a White House that treats the public with contempt. For starters the bruising is on both hands, no one shakes hands with both hands. As medical excuses go it’s as plausible as that of the alleged sex pest formerly known as Prince that he is incapable of sweating. The most likely explanation for Trump’s bruising and his regular disappearances from public view is that he’s being treated intravenously with a drug which can slow down the progress of dementia. These drugs, a drug called Lecanemab is most commonly mentioned in connection with Trump, are given intravenously, which would account for the bruising on his hands and his frequent disappearances. None of these treatments cure dementia, they only slow down its progress moderately. Lecanemab provides on average 4 to 6 months slowing in the rate of progression of dementia, after which it ceases to benefit the patient.

Sometime next year, Trump will reach the point at which his dementia is no longer responsive to treatment, after which his decline will accelerate rapidly. There are already signs that point might have been reached already. He has other health issues: he is overweight, sedentary and has a notoriously poor diet. By this time next year, if not sooner, the White House and the Republican party will no longer be able to cover up his lack of fitness for office. Given the trouncing the Republicans are going to experience in the mid term elections, many of them will see no advantage in continuing to prop Trump up. JD Vance, Trump’s successor, is as vile as his boss, but he has all the charisma of a well shagged sofa and will struggle to maintain the loyalty of the Republicans and the MAGA base in an America which is growing increasingly disenchanted with the craziness of the far right.

By the end of 2026, we could see the back of both Trump and Starmer, a pro independence majority in Holyrood, a Plaid Cymru led government in Wales, and a UK whose end is in sight. It’s always darkest before the dawn, but the dawn will start to glimmer in 2026.

Time to control the Fourth Estate?

There is so much going on at the moment in the political sphere with our attention being drawn in many directions. Some important matters are being ignored in the process. One of these, in my opinion, has wide ranging implications and connections with many of the 'big' stories of the day. I'm talking about the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a small minority, and the associated power and influence.

In 2023, the world’s richest 1%, defined as those with more than $1 billion, owned 47.5 percent of all the world’s wealth – equivalent to roughly $214 trillion. This inequality has only continued to grow. The world’s richest individuals are experiencing a rapid and historically unprecedented surge in their wealth, with the top 1% accumulating nearly twice as much new wealth as the rest of the world combined since 2020. In the UK, billionaire wealth has grown over 1000% since 1990, with the top 50 families holding more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population.

This massive inequality is, I would contend, incompatible with a properly functioning democracy. It is not a coincidence that the super-rich hoovering up an ever increasing amount of the world’s wealth has been associated with a rise in the far right and a marked rightwards shift in the centre of politics in Western countries. A shift also seen in the Labour Party, which has moved so far to the right that the original founders of the Labour Party would be expelled from it and which now occupies roughly the same political ground as the Conservatives did before Brexit drove them insane.

The super-rich, and the super-powerful, have worked assiduously to capture the political parties through a system of donations to both parties and individual politicians. They have also established a network of supposedly independent think tanks which formulate and promote policies which are beneficial to the wealthy, who are marketed as “wealth creators and the source of trickle down economics” and not as what they really are, “wealth hoarders and obscene spenders”. But above all, the rich perpetuate the conditions which permit them to keep enriching themselves through their control of the media, both the traditional media and the digital media. These outlets favour and promote a narrative that societal problems are created by immigrants, benefits claimants, asylum seekers, people of colour – particularly Muslims – women, transgender people, disabled people, or protesters - the “other”. Anyone and everyone must be blamed for society’s problems, except those who are really responsible.

In the UK, a recent YouGov poll has revealed that 75% support a wealth tax of 2% on fortunes above £10m, while only 13% oppose it. Yet despite this, very few politicians have voiced their support for a measure which an overwhelming majority support. Our politicians have become tame creatures of the robber barons from whom they are supposed to protect us and are too afraid of the media which promotes its owners’ viewpoints.

As wealth becomes ever more concentrated in the hands of a few, the right wing press and parties become increasingly shrill and hysterical in their demonisation of minority groups. This dehumanises entire sections of the population, stripping them of any right to empathy, compassion, or understanding. Asylum seekers are described as fighting age men with the implication that they are an invading force. They’re never described as working age although that’s perfectly accurate. They are never described as possibly offering skills and expertise that the country needs.

All this serves to divert attention from the real root cause of the failure of public services and the inability of an entire generation to find secure well paid jobs and affordable housing - the insatiable greed of the billionaires. Hyperbole? I don’t think so.

That our political class has turned into clients of the wealthy is incompatible with democracy. Root and branch reform of the system of political donations is long overdue. This system has given us the ascendency of the far right. Nigel Farage would not currently be tipped as a future prime minister if the system of political buying which prevails in the UK did not allow millionaires to funnel massive donations into his political vanity vehicle. They do so because they know Farage and his minions will enact policies which enable the rich to profit even more at the expense of the rest of us.

The purchasing of political influence by the rich goes hand in glove with ownership of the media by the wealthy. As campaigner George Monbiot pointed out in an article recently, you cannot have both a free market in media ownership and a free market in information and ideas. The oligarchs who dominate the sector stifle inconvenient thoughts and promote the policies that protect their fortunes. And it suits them that the spotlight is kept away from their activities. Where are the politicians brave enough to take them on? Where can such politicians air their views?

The Epstein files do not just reveal perversion and criminality, they also shine a light on the shadow power structure I'm talking about, operating far beyond the reach of ordinary democratic control. They reveal how rich and powerful men – and they are almost all men – help each other to become even richer and more powerful. They reveal how the wheels of power are greased; how information is traded; how favours are handed out. Suddenly, in fact, in reading the files, it is hard to escape the overwhelming sensation that most of us are naively clinging to outdated ideological convictions and assumptions about how the world operates, even as they are disproved. Maybe, maybe, the Epstein files might bring about some radical changes in some unexpected places.

Starmer's Woes

 

Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour party and his position as Prime Minister have been on a knife edge for some time. After being elected in July 2024 with a landslide victory in the Commons, albeit on a mere one third of the popular vote, Labour MPs were looking forward to settling down to a decade or more in government. Yet within a few weeks, the signs of Labour’s future downward trajectory were becoming clear.

First there was Freebie Gate: Starmer’s addiction to getting free stuff from Labour’s well heeled donors. Then the missteps came thick and fast, too many to list again. It was as though Starmer was setting out deliberately to alienate Labour’s traditional voting base while pandering to the far right on immigration, a quixotic chase after voters who would never support Labour which only succeeded in legitimising and mainstreaming far right policies and talking points. We are now at the point where more people have bought tickets to see the Melania Trump documentary than have full confidence in Keir Starmer’s leadership.

Things were already looking bad for Starmer when he took the decision to block the attempt of the Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham to return to the House of Commons. His MPs are in despair as the party’s polling ratings tank and Labour faces humiliating defeats in the Scottish, Welsh, and English local elections due in May. The expected loss of Wales, where Labour has reigned supreme since the 1920s would be a particularly bitter pill for Labour to swallow, the blame will be laid squarely at Starmer’s door.

But it all exploded over the past few days when a fresh release of Epstein files, with those referring to Donald Trump carefully weeded out – an estimated 2 million documents have still not been released – uncovered highly damaging information about Labour grandee Peter Mandelson, a close ally of Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney. McSweeney is very much Mandelson’s protege and was instrumental in persuading Starmer to appoint Mandelson as the UK Ambassador to the USA and as his Trump whisperer.

Mandelson was appointed to this high profile and sensitive position despite serial scandals about his conduct during previous Labour administrations. Mandelson is attracted to the super rich like a fly to a cow pat and has shown himself more than willing to leverage his government contacts in order to do favours for the wealthy friends who give him access to a luxury lifestyle way above his paygrade. In 1996 Mandelson bought an expensive home in the exclusive Notting Hill area of London with an interest free loan from Labour MP and aerospace CEO Geoffrey Robinson, whose business dealings were subject to an inquiry by Mandelson’s department when Mandelson was appointed Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on 27 July 1998. Mandelson then refused to recuse himself from an inquiry into the misuse of pension funds by Robert Maxwell, who was a business associate of Robinson. The resultant scandal was the first time that Mandelson would be forced to resign in disgrace. It would not be the last.

In 2001, when Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mandelson was forced to resign from the government a second time after being accused of abusing his position to secure British citizenship for billionaire Indian businessman Srichand Hinduja.

Mandelson was then appointed as the UK’s European Commissioner, where he held the trade portfolio. While holding this position he was accused in 2005 of inappropriate links to Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, whose company was at the time the centre of a major EU investigation into its trading practices. Despite this, Mandelson spent time on Allen’s yacht and holidayed with the billionaire.

Holidaying on the yachts of billionaires whose business practices are under investigation by governments of which he is a part is very much a habit of Mandelson’s. He is known to have associated with a number of controversial European and Russian billionaires.

In 2008 Mandelson was given a peerage by Gordon Brown and appointed Business Secretary. While in this post, Mandelson pressed for tough measures against digital piracy – ie downloading TV shows and movies without paying for them – after holidaying with DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen at the Rothschild family villa on the Greek island of Corfu.

Mandelson has slithered from one scandal to another throughout his political career, the one constant being his schmoozing with the super rich for whom he’s eager to do favours.

So it’s scarcely surprising that he’d gravitate to Jeffrey Epstein, with whom Mandelson had maintained a friendship since at least 2002, a friendship which continued long after Epstein’s first conviction for sexual offences involving a minor in 2008. Mandelson remained in contact with Epstein until at least 2016. In 2009 Mandelson advised Epstein on how the investment bank J P Morgan might lobby the government on plans for a tax on bankers’ bonuses. Mandelson was part of the government at the time. The documents released recently also show that Epstein made two large payments to Mandelson and his husband.

It has long been known that Mandelson stayed in Epstein’s New York home while Epstein was in prison for sex offences. Mandelson also lobbied the US government in March 2010, in an attempt to water down proposed restrictions on US bank trading activities, on behalf of Epstein and Morgan J P Morgan CEO of Capital Management, Jes Staley. Staley, a former CEO of Barclay’s Bank, has been accused of providing the banking facilities which Epstein used to fund his networks of abuse and human trafficking.

Starmer knew about Mandelson’s links to Epstein when he appointed him as British Ambassador to the USA in December 2024. These links had been common knowledge in Labour circles for many years. Despite this, Starmer still saw fit to appoint Mandelson to a high profile and sensitive post which is normally given to an experienced diplomat, not to the likes of Mandelson, a man who is willing to overlook any sin as long as it’s committed by someone who is obscenely wealthy. That’s very on brand for Starmer’s Labour party. As Freebie Gate demonstrated, Starmer himself is happy to schmooze with the rich in return for expensive gifts.

Mandelson’s appointment casts serious questions on the judgement of Keir Starmer, who was forced to admit at PMQs this week that he knew about Mandelson’s links to Epstein when he appointed him ambassador. At that moment, Starmer lost control of the Labour party. His appointment of Mandelson in full knowledge of Mandelson’s sleazy past and his ties to Epstein tells you all you need to know about the moral vacuum at the heart of the Labour party. Labour MPs are reportedly in despair, and rebelled against the Government’s attempts to block the release of government documents in which the appointment was discussed. The mood on Labour benches is reportedly sulphurous. One former Labour minister told The Guardian: “We were meant to be the ones who didn’t do this stuff. It’s time for a fresh start, the sooner the better.”

Pressure is mounting for Starmer to face a confidence vote. This story is not going away, piling on fresh damage to Labour as it gears up for May’s elections.

On Thursday, attempting to save his political skin, Starmer was forced to deliver a humiliating apology to Epstein’s victims. Starmer has claimed Mandelson lied repeatedly about the extent of his ties to Epstein. Too little, too late?

Starmer’s one big promise when he was elected in July 2024 was change, change from the chaos and sleaze of the Tories. How’s that working out for him now?

Free Speech for me - but not for thee.

In the wake of the killing of the far right influencer Charlie Kirk, the right wing has revealed the truth about its attitude to free speech. The hypocrisy of the right on freedom of speech was there all the time, but their response to the killing of Charlie Kirk has exposed it plainly for all to see. The right is only opposed to cancel culture and restrictions on freedom of speech when they are restrictions on their ability to be abusive, insulting, and threatening towards minorities and anyone else who stands in their way. 

Over in America, things are getting increasingly febrile, and as, what happens across the Pond generally comes over here sooner or later, we can not afford to be complacent. This week, JD Vance has given his support to a far right campaign to harass, cancel, intimidate and sack anyone the right deems not to have sufficiently mourned the killing of Kirk or who has dared to quote Kirk’s own words as evidence that the newly canonised saint of the American MAGA movement was, in fact, a racist, a misogynist, a transphobe and an extremist whose views were until recently far beyond the bounds of political respectability. No one can be permitted to criticise the Patron Saint of Republican Intolerance or to cast doubt on the halo bestowed upon him since his murder. 

The US State Department has announced that it will use AI to trawl the social media accounts of foreigners applying for visas to go to the USA and will deny them to anyone that the Republican-run State Department considers to have ‘mocked’ Kirk’s murder. You can be quite certain that the definition of ‘mocked’ will be extended to include any criticism of Kirk or any failure to worship at his shrine.

The motivations of Kirk’s killer remain murky, but Trump’s allies have rushed to link the killing – even although they have no real real evidence – to what they claim is a coordinated left wing “terror” movement that supports political violence. They claim that this supposedly coordinated and organised “terror” movement is funded by progressive and liberal charities. This conspiracy theory has the backing of the American Government and has led to fears of a draconian crackdown on free speech.

America is, and always has been, a violent country, and both those on the left and the right have committed acts of violence. But it remains a fact that most victims of politically motivated violence in the USA are attacked by those on the right.  The data show that most political violence in the USA is committed by those on the right. Excluding 9/11, figures from Time magazine show that of the 620 politically motivated murders committed in the USA since 1975, 63.0% were perpetrated by those on the political right, and just 10.5% by those on the political left. 23% were carried out by Islamists, 1.3% by foreign nationalists and most of the rest by those whose motives were unclear.

Colin Clarke, senior researcher at the Soufan Center focusing on domestic and transnational terrorism, told Time that the data show a clear disparity in lethality between left and right when it comes to political violence. He said:”There’s no question that, if you look at the numbers in terms of lethality, it is the far right that’s been far more lethal—Tree of Life, the El Paso Walmart attack, the Buffalo supermarket shooting.” Each of these attacks was committed with extremist, white-supremacist motivations. Prior to 9/11, the worst terrorist attack on American soil was the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, carried out by far right white supremacist and conspiracy theorist Timothy McVeigh.

However Trump’s speech in the aftermath of Kirk’s murder made no mention of right wing political violence, even though just forty days before Kirk was killed, Melissa Hortman, a Democrat lawmaker in Minnesota was shot and killed with her husband and another Democrat state senator was shot and wounded along with his wife. The perpetrator was a MAGA devotee of Donald Trump. Asked about Hortman’s murder, Trump claimed he was “not familiar” with the case.

Republicans grieve the loss of Kirk and demand that everyone else grieves for him too, but for the most part they have ignored the violence against Democrats, including Hortman’s assassination, the arson attack on the home of Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor, the violent assault on Paul Pelosi, the husband of former speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a thwarted plot to kidnap the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer. The attack on the 81 year old Paul Pelosi, who was struck on the head with a hammer by a far right intruder who was looking for Nancy Pelosi, was met with widespread mockery and derision from the right. Speaking to a TV audience days after the attack on Pelosi, a grinning Charlie Kirk called for the attacker to be released from jail and said: “If some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out.”

The US Republicans, like Reform UK and the Tory right here, are only interested in freedom of speech for themselves. What they really want is to be able to make racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic or other bigoted comments without fear of any consequences. They are very keen to censor or silence anyone who criticises the sacred cows of the right, whether that’s Charlie Kirk or their sanitised, indeed, whitewashed, view of history. Don’t let it happen. Stand up for real freedom of speech, even if you have to hold your nose when you apply it to those you vehemently disagree with.

Othering, demonising and empathy

I've just read an interesting article on "How Othering contributes to Discrimination and Prejudice"  You can find it here and it's well worth a few minutes of your time reading it and thinking about it in terms of current events, both local and in the USA. 

Othering and demonising opponents has always a key part of Trump's modus operandii, long before he became interested in politics. It's simply what he does. And the right, particularly the far right which Charlie Kirk represented, is defined by it. It's simply what they do. And in the process, any empathy for the 'other' is lost and the 'other' are dehumanised.

Charlie Kirk had a long history of espousing morally questionable views in the supposed name of Christianity – a form of Christianity which seems to be alien to the precepts of the Gospels as is commonly understood over here. I don’t think that when Jesus said: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” there was an additional verse saying – “Unless they are a migrant or gay or trans or left wing.....” Kirk’s openly racist views are well documented. He said civil rights hero Dr Martin Luther King was “awful… not a good person.” He also called the Civil Rights Movement “a huge mistake.” His views on abortion went beyond the bounds of reason or human decency. He once said that if his ten year old daughter became pregnant as a result of rape then she should be forced to carry the baby to term. He also insisted: “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage.”

Actually his etymology is wrong: the English word empathy was coined in 1909 in order to provide a translation of the German word Einfühlung, which goes as far back, at least, to the 18th century in the writings of the Prussian philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder. Of course, something exists long before there’s a name for it. The dwarf planet Pluto has existed for billions of years, even if there has only been a name for it since it was discovered in 1930. Indeed, Jesus’s injunction to 'love thy neighbour as thyself' is a commandment to practice empathy, 2000 years ago. But that fact doesn't fit in with Kirk's narrative.

Long before the New Age movement was a thing, Hannah Arendt wrote: “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism. The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.” That is where we are now in 2025. The barbarians are not at the gates, they are on social media and in our mobile phones.

The hard right is seeking to destroy empathy. The far right’s tactics of demonisation and dehumanisation can only work when we cannot be allowed to feel empathy for the victims of their hatred. We cannot be permitted to feel empathy for trans people or migrants. Kirk sought to deny the validity of empathy, a sentiment also shared by Elon Musk. To deny empathy is to deny humanity. 

Charlie Kirk was a deeply unpleasant individual with some deeply unpleasant views but that, of course, does not justify or condone his murder. There is no excuse for murdering an individual because of his views and, of course, his murder should be condemned. Since his murder, the media has set out to sanctify Kirk, presenting him as a mainstream Christian and a mainstream Conservative, a modern martyr. Kirk’s views were not mainstream and, if we allow them to become normalised, we are in deep trouble as a society. 

Empathy is in very short supply across British politics, but we can still try to keep its flame alive. Let's not forget that our politics, although it might not seem like it at the moment, are based on the cultural tradition of communitarianism and the deeply empathetic belief that we all help our neighbours. Perhaps this will give us a strong foundation from which to resist the selfish and alienating cynicism upon which the far right feeds?

The deliberate attempt to create a narrative centering around “us” and “them” and to mobilize violence against that 'other' was on display last weekend. Elon Musk kindly helped encourage the most unstable people imaginable to join the protest. He bravely incited violence from the safety of his desk in the US, telling the mob, "Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die." Don't worry, it's fine when rich white people use this sort of language so Elon is not in any trouble. The protesters were so inspired by Elon's words that they patriotically threw rocks at police vans. This was to show how mad they are that foreigners come here and don't respect our laws. One protester even held up a banner demanding that we make Sharia Law illegal. Think about it. Yes, we should make a law that is not the law illegal to stop it being the law, even though it is not the law and wasn't going to be the law. Only people with the biglyest and bestest brains can process what I just said there.

And here's a description of the event from a friend who was there: "Any pretence that "raising the flag" is anything but intimidation of minorities is dispelled. It's against refugees, against migrants, against Palestinian flags, against LGBTQ+ flags, against trade union flags".