The Horseshoe Strikes Back

Photos of Kyiv taken by myself

It’s strange to think that the Kyiv I visited once in 2018, a peaceful, friendly city, with bars, cobbled back alleys, leafy courtyards, and busy grand streets, where people got on with their everyday lives, is now under attack from Russia. I took the free tour of the city, where they explained that the profusion of EU flags was due to their desire for Ukraine to join the EU. I wandered the city's ancient streets, stopping to take photos such as the one above of monuments, and visiting, spellbound, its huge cathedrals and underground caves.

Kyiv Pechersk Lavra

Among the saddest things about watching this beautiful city be shelled, one of the most unedifying aspects of watching the news the last few weeks has been observing several commentators on both the far-left and the far-right falling over themselves to repeat Kremlin propaganda. 

The fact that these statements appear almost indistinguishable from each other has only confirmed what has been already apparent after the Brexit referendum: that the far-left and far-right meet each other, conforming to the 'Horseshoe theory'. It’s one that was explored in Nick Cohen’s You Can’t Read This Book, in which he focused on "the murky world where the far-left meets the far-right". 

Horseshoe theory of politics (source)

Shortly after the Russian invasion of mainland Ukraine, Stop The War (STW) released a one-sided statement, with not a single reference to Putin initiating the war of his own volition (though in fairness Tweets since then have called for 'Russian troops out of Ukraine'). Beyond a perfunctory call for the conflict to end with an "immediate ceasefire" and "diplomatic negotiations to end the crisis", the statement then put the invasion squarely at the foot of "failed policies, including the expansion of NATO and US hegemony at the expense of other countries as well as major wars of aggression by the USA, Britain and other NATO powers which have undermined international law and the United Nations". It’s as if Putin had no role to play whatsoever. That was also reflected in an online rally called by STW around the same time called ‘No to War – No To NATO’, with no third clause stating ‘No To Putin’:

It was also reflected in Tweets by STW’s Fiona Edwards, including the one above, who advertised the event with the claim that “the aggressive eastward expansion of NATO, threatening Russia’s security, is the cause of the current crisis in Ukraine”. In another Tweet (below), she claimed that "as the war-mongers in Washington and London escalate their war-mongering against Russia, remember that the first casualty in war is the truth. The truth is that the current crisis in Ukraine is caused by the eastward expansion of NATO. NATO is the aggressor, not Russia". The same sentiments have been on display in Socialist Action's Tweets and websites like Counterfire. Once again, Putin was absolved of crime, as if he had no agency when ordering the invasion.

Even worse, a STW analysis by Andrew Murray from 31st January, prior to the invasion of mainland Ukraine, repeated another baseless claim that has also been smugly parroted by the far left and far right: that Ukraine is 'fascist', 'Nazi', and even run by 'drug addicts'. This line essentially recycled what the Kremlin has asserted in order to justify their invasion of Ukraine, including the claim that Ukraine is "ethnically cleansing Russians" and "banning the Russian language" (having been to Ukraine, I can report that the latter isn’t true – Ukrainian and Russian are spoken alongside each other). While grudgingly conceding that Ukraine has a right to self-determination, albeit with borders that are not "sensible" - as if every international border is "sensible" - it claims that "since the 2014 coup by nationalists, which overthrew Ukraine’s elected President, it has taken a number of undemocratic steps…pro-Russian politicians have been arrested or harassed…Russian has been banned from the public sphere…alone in Europe, Ukraine celebrates Nazi collaborators and pogrom-mongers, like the Bandera movement…its supporters – overt fascists – are also embedded in Ukrainian state apparatus". This well-worn assertion has been explored well in this Guardian article, which points out that Ukraine has a Jewish president, whose own family died in the Holocaust, and explores why so many are making this claim about Ukraine’s Government, which includes unpleasant Jewish tropes, and the concomitant implication that Ukraine must be 'saved' by 'true Christian believers'. It's also been debunked in this excellent article on People and Nature's website.

Claiming that Ukraine’s Government is essentially 'fascist' also wilfully ignores what really happened in 2014. Ukraine’s Government at that point, led by Viktor Yanukovych, was due to start negotiations with the EU over closer ties, with a long-term view to possible membership (though this would’ve most likely taken decades). Panicking at this prospect, the Kremlin threatened to cut off Ukraine’s gas, forcing Ukraine’s Government to cancel talks with the EU, and in the process forcing Ukraine against its wishes to be part of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) sphere, a geopolitical rival to the EU headed by Russia. Unhappy at this, ordinary members of Ukrainian society protested in Maidan Nezalezhnosti square in Kyiv. The protests expressed the wishes of the majority of the population in believing that Ukraine should not be another Belarus, subservient and compliant to the Russian Government, with a dictator similar to Lukashenko in charge. Instead, Ukrainians simply wished for their country to embrace a European social democracy model, similar to the Baltic states, or even Finland, all of whom are successful, happy, democratic, and prosperous, rather than remaining tied to Moscow’s authoritarian orbit. For this, they earned the scorn not just of Russia’s Government, but also of both the far left and the far right. 

John Wojcik in Morning Star, for example, backed up the same claims as Murray in this article, opining not just the same tropes about "the persecution the fascist Ukrainian government was visiting on ethnic Russians everywhere in Ukraine", including banning the Russian language, but also claiming that Ukraine "put well-known fascists in charge of the country’s police and military as a reward for fascist support of the coup", and practices "extreme Ukrainian nationalism" (apparently Russian nationalism is allowed, but Ukrainian nationalism isn’t). Wojcik’s angry assertions included mention of "Western capitalist interests" in Ukraine, scalding the fact that an ex-Soviet state has chosen freely to associate itself with successful European democracies rather than follow the Kremlin’s orders, and inferring that Ukraine’s population has been somehow 'brainwashed' by the West. This assertion that Ukraine has been a US-backed fascist/Nazi aberration since 2014, rather than a popular uprising by ordinary Ukrainians, has also been pushed by George Galloway via this Tweet and others, with links to the website of the Communist Party of The Russian Federation, which expands on these conspiracy beliefs, including claiming that "The nature of the current Ukrainian state is an alliance of big capital and the state bureaucracy, relying on criminal and fascist elements under the full political and financial control of the United States...after 2014 Nazi ideology is being implanted in Ukraine". 

In doing so, Wojcik and Galloway are freely making the same claims as the Kremlin: that Ukraine is not allowed to choose its own future as a free, democratic state, as the Baltics have, and that instead Ukrainians should instead take what they’re given. The fact that the majority of Ukrainians have chosen to see their country as free, democratic, and prosperous, as the Baltics and Poland are, and Ukraine has been edging closer to this, has meant that they deserve punishment for such erroneous desires. Ukraine’s "crime" has been to choose its own friends. 

This belief that Ukraine must be "punished" for wanting to choose their own way, rather than being poor, conflict-driven, and allied to Russia, is symptomatic of an element of the far left in Britain that has always rued the decline of the Soviet Union (SU) and the Warsaw Pact, and embodied in figures such as Jeremy Corbyn’s former Communications chief, and former Guardian journalist, Seamus Milne, who likewise wrote this article about NATO in 2014. Something of this can also be seen in STW’s video here of NATO expansion, in which Germany is perpetually held up as divided even now between East and West, as if in STW’s minds reunification never really quite happened. This echoes Putin’s recent, rambling speech, where he questioned Ukraine’s very right to exist as a sovereign ex-Soviet state – and by implication, all the other ex-Soviet states too. In his own mind, the SU’s fall was an aberration that never really happened, with the ex-Soviet states set to re-join Russia in only a matter of time in a new, revitalised Soviet Union and EAEU; indeed, this belief, and long-term goal of Putin, partly drove Russia’s invasions of Georgia and now Ukraine. This expansionist nature of Putin’s administration, completely rejected by the majority of the populations in those ex-Soviet countries now in the EU, has not been mentioned by STW; instead, the only expansionism and imperialism in their minds are that of NATO. And to justify his invasion of Ukraine, just like the far left, Putin has evoked the idea that Ukraine must be nobly rescued and "denazified" from "fascist Nazi drug addicts" in Ukraine’s Government, who have steered Ukraine away from the path of true Slavic purity. At no point have any of those mentioned ever brought up Russia’s own problems with fascism, including the ultranationalist and neo-fascist Aleksandr Dugin, active within the Kremlin, and author of the geopolitical tract Foundations of Geopolitics in 1997, which didn’t just predict Brexit, but also the annexing of Ukraine, and Georgia before that, by Russia.

Foundations of Geopolitics by Aleksandr Dugin (source)

It's not just the far left who have made these claims. Many Brexiteers, such as Nigel Farage, who has made no secret of his admiration for Putin, also concurred with the far left, deliberately conflating the EU and NATO when claiming that the war is "a consequence of EU and NATO expansion, which came to a head in 2014. It makes no sense to poke the Russian bear with a stick". Aaron Banks, likewise, chose to conflate the two (below), as well as claiming that “the EU chose to meddle in Ukraine” and “started this mess”, and compared Crimea to the Isle of Wight (his Twitter now appears to be suspended).

Daniel Hannan, meanwhile, has praised Putin’s ability to “show the West to be dithering, divided, and drippy” (below). 

And it’s a sentiment shared across the pond, where the American right has been spellbound by Russia and Putin, seeing it as the "defender" of white values, with an already-established nexus that links Russia to Trump's election in 2016, thus turning on its head the original belief by the American right in the perennial Communist enemy. Once again, Ukraine’s "crime" has been to choose its own friends.

It’s not hard to see why the far-left and the far-right alike are loathe to see Ukraine break away from Moscow’s orbit. It means Ukraine cultivating closer ties to the EU and a united Europe of social democracies, which is anathema to Putin and Farage alike. This, in turn, would reflect badly in an existential sense Russia’s own dysfunctional internal politics, with Ukraine showing – after the example of the Baltics – another way for ex-Soviet states. So, Ukraine had to be punished, in order to 'bring them into line' with Russia, and so be an example to other ex-Soviet states of what happens if you decide to embrace European democracy. 

It’s in the interest of both Putin and Farage, in other words, to see Ukraine perennially poor and conflict-driven. Farage and other Brexiteers such as Steve Baker have made no secret that they wish to see the EU broken up and disunited – the very same beliefs that Putin has. This is a belief shared by others in British media and politics, such as Allister Heath of The Telegraph, who has deliberately pushed anti-EU rhetoric on behalf of vested interests such as right-wing think-tanks at 55 Tufton Street (something that I’ve covered already in greater detail elsewhere). That includes a number of wealthy Russian oligarchs, together with members of the American right alike. You can see these links in the graphic below (download and Zoom in if you're having problems seeing the text).

If you designed this graphic, please contact me to credit me

By promoting disharmony in Europe, the Brexiteers have found themselves on the same side as the Kremlin, questioning the very existential nature of the EU. The very sovereignty that the Brexiteers on both the far left and far right trumpeted as reason for the UK to leave the EU (in reality, the UK always was sovereign while in the EU) has been conspicuously absent when applied to Ukraine, with the Brexiteers claiming that Ukraine has no right to join the EU and NATO. While the Lexiteers believed that the EU was evil in 'siding' with NATO and Western Europe (despite the fact that a number of EU member-states are not members of NATO); for having 'neoliberal' elements (despite the fact that the UK was always the most neo-liberal member-state prior to leaving); for facilitating Freedom of Movement of EU citizens (a ‘neoliberal’ plot designed to stop the bargaining power of ordinary workers, apparently, even though this hasn’t happened in Germany, a full member); and with some opening up of markets; the far-right disliked the EU – and still do – for its social protection, solidarity between nations, and workers’ rights, all of which are anathema for them. The goal of Brexit for the far-right has always been deregulation, the rolling back of the welfare state, reduced workers’ rights, the snapping up of assets on the cheap among the economic and political chaos wrought by Brexit, and the total privatisation of the NHS as a public body – a kind of disaster capitalism, similar to Russia after the collapse of the SU (‘The Shock Doctrine’, as Naomi Klein dubbed it). 

Meanwhile, Spiked magazine seized on their infatuation with Putin and hatred of the EU to dispense with this article blaming identity politics for the war – and by proxy, blaming Western culture and the EU. At this point, it’s worth remembering who Spiked are. They have their roots in the hard-left Trotskyite Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), whose member Claire Fox now sits as an unelected Baroness in the House of Lords, thus going against everything that the RCP was meant to stand for in their belief in overhauling capitalism. The RCP went bankrupt after their magazine, Living Marxism, was sued by ITV for claiming erroneously that the news channel had fabricated evidence of Serb atrocities against Bosnian Muslims. Fox founded the Institute of Ideas; Spiked emerged from the ashes of this. 

Once again, many on the far-left and the far-right found common cause in their opposition to the EU, which, as mentioned earlier, they deliberately conflated with their concomitant dislike for the other piece in this jigsaw, NATO – this despite the fact that NATO and the EU are two markedly different organisations. It is the fear that Ukraine could eventually join NATO, not just the EU, which has stirred the far-left and the far-right, with examples of this article already given. While it is true that NATO was involved in Afghanistan and Libya (though not in the Iraq War, as STW have claimed) - and there is a strong argument that it shouldn’t have been, given that its chief purpose is as a defence pact rather than aggressor - the uncomfortable truth is also that if NATO didn’t exist in eastern Europe, the likes of the Baltics and even Poland could be facing the same prospect as Ukraine is facing now, given that the Kremlin has an expansionist madman in charge. This is especially the case in Latvia, whose population is 40% Russian. Russia has frequently used the pretext of Russian minorities to annex ex-Soviet territory, including not just Crimea and South Ossetia in Georgia, but also the breakaway province of Transnistria in Moldova; indeed, that country, also - like Ukraine - not in the EU or NATO, could be next in the firing line.

While it’s easy to be judgemental about NATO here in the UK, the reality is that for those living in Poland, Slovakia, the Baltic states, and a number of other countries, the fear of a possible invasion from a Russia that under Putin has never quite accepted their independence and consolidation in the EU 'family', is a very real, and not theoretical, possibility. It’s NATO that has protected these states from such an event happening. This reality has been hard for both the far left and far right to accept. Whether NATO could’ve been done away with while Putin was in charge is a moot point. 

When George Monbiot called out this collusion between the far-left and far-right on Twitter, and then in The Guardian, he received a pile-on in the replies, with many claiming that he was creating a straw man that doesn’t exist. But Monbiot was right. Just as with Brexit, elements of the far-right have been indistinguishable, conforming to the horseshoe effect. In denouncing NATO and the West while only briefly disowning Putin’s actions, they’ve joined Russia in condemning Ukraine’s belief that their rightful future is in the European fold of prosperous and peaceful social democracies. The far left and the far left have to ask themselves: why should Ukraine not be allowed the right to choose their own destiny and go down this path? 

Friends of The Earth Hackney & Tower Hamlets / Great Big Green Week event

Some more posts will be forthcoming after I return from The World Transformed festival in Brighton, running parallel to the Labour conference, but before then, as my part of my volunteering for Friends of the Earth Hackney & Tower Hamlets, I will be helping with the running of the following events, all taking place on Saturday 25th September 2021, as part of the umbrella festival Great Big Green Week, a nationwide celebration of climate action and nature, in the run-up to COP26 in Glasgow.

The events will take place in Poplar, Mile End, and Bow, east London. (All venues are linked by a direct bus).

Event 1

MORNING: Litter pick with SunnyJar

Join SunnyJar EcoHub and us for a Litter Pick at and around Chrisp Street Market to support their Plastic Free Poplar campaign. You only need to bring your enthusiasm. And at the end, we'll have hot chocolate for you. Yes, really - hot chocolate.

Time: 10:30am - 12:30pm

Venue: Chrisp Street Community Cycles, E14 6BT [map]

All welcome, the event is entirely out and about (standing and walking).

Outdoors, all-weather, dress appropriately.

Event 2

AFTERNOON: Experience an Urban Wellbeing Space

Join us at Mile End Community Garden for an activity-filled afternoon for all ages! There will be workshops in bunting making and mending clothes, portrait photos, garden tours and tips, games for the kids, a cafe with hot drinks and cakes, and a chance to sow your own seeds to take home.

Time: 1:00pm - 4.00pm

Venue: Mile End Community Garden, Clinton Road, E3 4QU [map] (20 min on bus D6 from Chrisp Street Market)

All welcome. The garden is fairly accessible but has a mulched path. We'll provide any support needed - please get in touch!

Event outdoors, with covered areas.

Event 3

AFTERNOON: Debate & Community

Join us for an interactive panel discussion on concrete climate action around food & waste with Councillor Asma Islam (Cabinet Member for Environment), Richenda from Growing Communities, Ruby from Get Loose, and Andrea from Mana Biosystems at Root/25 not-for-profit café - supported by OurPledge.

Time: 4:30pm - 6:30pm

Venue: Root/25 Cafe, 116B Bow Rd, Bow, E3 3AA [map] (15 min on bus 425 from Mile End Station)

Capacity limited to 35 - please book a ticket to reserve your spot.

All welcome, but there is a short flight of stairs.

Please get in touch for any support.

Event indoors.

We hope to see you there!

For all three events, tickets are free (donations appreciated), booking is essential. Tickets can be purchased here.

Join us. 

The UK needs Proportional Representation after Coronavirus - along with a wider shake-up of the Establishment

Map showing countries around the world that use proportional voting systems (source)

I’ve been thinking about what needs to be done to make the UK a more modern place in these strange times, as we face the end of the latest lockdown. And our antiquated electoral system is one of them.

The obsessive, all-pervasive nature with which the UK has focused on its inglorious and messy exit from the European Union in the last four-and-a-half years, and the chaos caused by the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic at the end of 2019, plunging not just the UK but the global economy into recession, has meant that another pressing matter has been left on the drawing board: reform of the UK’s voting system. This is despite the fact that the very same voting system arguably contributed to Brexit happening in the first place.

The UK’s insistence on clinging to first-past-the-post (FPTP) remains at odds with many of its European neighbours. The UK’s antagonism with the EU, culminating in Brexit, may in part be down to the fact that the UK’s voting system favours a 'winner-takes-all' approach, with parties in Parliament facing each other in adversity. This can be contrasted with the EU’s tradition of consensus, as reflected in the fact that many EU member-states favour versions of Proportional Representation (PR). Furthermore, the European Parliament also uses PR, in which MEPs work together as blocs according to different political spectrums. Indeed, it could be argued that if the UK had adopted a voting system other than FPTP, it is possible that the UK could have ended up with a very different scenario to the one it faces now. 

In essence, in FPTP, voters indicate on a ballot the candidate of their choice, and the candidate who receives the most votes then wins. This simplified view of the electoral process has been baldly labelled as “bad for voters, bad for government and bad for democracy” by the Electoral Reform Society (ERS), which has long campaigned for change. It has ensured that a compressed two-party system is embedded in the political system – a principle known as 'Duverger’s Law', after the sociologist Maurice Duverger - with little chance for other parties to make their mark. The exception is if a coalition is formed, such as the previous one between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats after 2010’s general election (GE), but coalitions in the UK still remain relatively rare compared to those in countries that use PR. FPTP is still used in the USA, with its deeply flawed electoral college system, as well as many countries in the Commonwealth - but by no means all: Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa have all changed from FPTP to a PR voting method. At the same time, within the UK itself, PR has been used to some extent in the devolved Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly with the Additional Member System (AMS), which mixes PR with FPTP.

The legacy of FPTP in the UK is that in GEs, many voters in ‘safe seats’ have simply given up voting for any party other than Labour or Conservative, given that under FPTP their votes would essentially be worthless. Those who have voted for anyone but the main two parties have found their vote effectively ‘wasted’, leading to voter apathy.

In contrast, many other EU member-states employ PR, an arguably much more representative electoral system, in which more than one candidate is elected in a constituency/voting area. How these member-states implement PR varies, whether using the party-list method, single transferable vote, or mixed-member method. Overall, though, this has ensured a more precise representation of voter intentions, with the line-up in Governments accurately reflecting the result of elections (especially using the D’Hondt method) in terms of allocating seats. This can be compared to the 2005 UK GE, where the Labour Party was victorious, despite winning as little as 35% of votes. Likewise, in 2019’s GE, only 44% voted Conservative, yet they gained an 80-seat majority - and, with it, 100% of the power.

Graphic by Make Votes Matter (source)

PR has meant a greater choice for voters that can match their beliefs more strongly, which in turn has encouraged turn-out for elections. Not only does this mean less 'wasted votes', but it also means that candidates have to campaign in all districts, rather than just the 'swing seats'.

In the UK, the Brexit campaign, while stretching far back with many roots, was truly set rolling when the Conservatives pledged to hold a referendum in their manifesto for the 2015 GE. The Tories would go on to win that election despite only 36.9% of votes cast. Along the way, the Liberal Democrats, who under PR could have stated the case for their party as presenting a genuine alternative that embraces Europe, found themselves out cold. In contrast, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who the Tories relied on as part of a coalition after the 2017 general election, were effectively given a green light to hold the Government to ransom, despite commanding only a minority of votes in Northern Ireland, and hardly any in Great Britain itself. While the majority of Northern Ireland’s voters expressed their desire to remain in the EU, the DUP insisted that the region remains entirely the opposite, opposing any divergence of Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK – except when it came to same-sex marriage and abortion, of course. Ironically, due to the DUP’s Brexit vote, with Northern Ireland staying in the EU’s customs zone and the UK facing a de facto internal border between NI and GB, Northern Ireland is now set to diverge ever more from the U.K. and be drawn ever further into the EU’s orbit, thus hastening the reunification of the island of Ireland – although the UK may attempt to stop this with its current shenanigans over the Northern Irish Protocol.

Opponents of PR have long held that it would ensure a presence in parliament of right-wing groups such as UKIP. However, the experience of a number of other EU member-states has shown that the views of more extremist wings can often be neutered. In the general election that took place in the Netherlands in 2017, all major parties refused to form a coalition with Geert Wilders’ right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV - Partij Voor de Vrijheid in Dutch), which meant that the PVV was effectively denied any chance in participating in Government policy.

The UK did have a referendum on changing the electoral system in 2011. This was to replace the present FPTP system with the ‘Alternative Vote’ (AV) method, rather than PR. Under AV, voters rank candidates in order of preference. The ballots for the eliminated losing candidates are then redistributed until one candidate is a top remaining choice of voters. If two candidates are left with equal ranking, an 'instant runoff' allows head-to-head comparison – hence the use of the term 'Instant-Runoff voting' as an alternative name for AV. The referendum to change to AV was rejected by 67.9% of voters. Noticeably, the areas that voted 'Yes' above 50% to changing to AV were Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh Central, Glasgow Kelvin, and six voting areas in London – the same places that voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU referendum. Since then, the 2011 referendum has been barely mentioned.

Prior to this, there were attempts to introduce PR into the UK parliament during the early 1900s. In the 1970s, FPTP produced weak majority governments in the UK while part of a coalition – ironically, the very situation that detractors of PR have claimed is its major flaw. In more recent times, the Liberal Democrats have advocated for PR.

If the Conservatives had gone into the 2015 election under a PR system of Government, they could have found their commitment to holding a referendum on the UK’s EU membership under sustained scrutiny. Members of Labour, the Greens, and the Liberal Democrats could have stared down the Eurosceptic backbenchers. In addition, the likes of the Greens, virtually shut out of Government under FPTP, could have exerted pressure under PR to guide in liberally progressive policies. Instead, the UK had found itself stuck in a never-ending two-party system that sees no sign of opening up – a gift for the Conservatives, in particular, who have no desire to change the system (Labour’s view remains more ambiguous), but a curse for other parties, whose only chance of making a change is via a coalition with the two main parties. The fact that FPTP benefits the Tories and Labour so well has ensured that a change to PR remains an unlikely prospect; it would mean politicians from either party having to deal with MPs of real mettle, such as the Greens' Caroline Lucas. Yet it is not impossible that Labour may try to agitate for electoral change.

But how would PR work in practice? As an experiment, I’ve tried to imagine what the UK system would look like under a PR party-list system. It’s a mind-bogglingly complicated task. The aforementioned Electoral Reform Society point out that "rather than electing one person per area, in Party List [i.e. Proportional Representation] systems each area is bigger and elects a group of MPs that closely reflect the way the area voted. At the moment, we have 650 constituencies, each electing 1 Member of Parliament (MP); under a Party List system we might have 26 constituencies, each electing 25 MPs".

Theoretically, the number of these constituencies under PR - which I’m going to call ‘voting super-areas’ (VSA), as awful as that sounds, to distinguish them from current constituencies - doesn’t have to be 26. A mathematical calculation will tell you that 50 VSA under PR with 13 MPs makes 650; however, the number of MPs – i.e. seats - in each of these VSA could fluctuate from 10 to 13, divided proportionally with the top three or four main parties, based on the population density of each VSA, making the total number of MPs in the country total 650. Each of those constituencies would be a coalition of MPs, based on voter figures. The Boundary Commission, the body that is responsible for balancing the UK’s constituencies sizes under our current FPTP system, would have a huge task.

Nonetheless, there are already precedents that we can go by. The most obvious is the fact that while the UK was a member of the EU, it took part in elections to European Parliaments under PR. Going by the results of the 2019 European Parliament election – the last that the UK was involved with – you can see that the UK was split into just 12 super-regions (technically 13 if you include Gibraltar, which was included but has its own Parliament as a British Overseas Territory):

British super-regions for European Parliament elections (source)

Taking the example of London, as you can see, the city was counted as one overall super-region, for which the Brexit Party, the Liberal Democrats, Labour and the Greens al all won seats, sending MEPs to the Parliament in Brussels - all of which then joined their own pan-European bloc of like-minded fellow MEPs (the current iterations of which can be viewed here).

The UK’s referendum on the EU in 2016, meanwhile, split England, Wales, and Scotland into ‘Voting Areas’ based on Councils, each comprising a number of constituencies (Northern Ireland kept to its normal constituency boundaries). Wales had around 22 of these voting areas, while Scotland had 32 (blue areas in image voted overall to leave; yellow to remain). Due to its much larger size, England had vastly more voting areas. 

Map of the United Kingdom showing the voting areas for the European Union membership referendum, 2016 (source)

The method used for the EU referendum still produced more voting areas than would be possible under PR. At the other end of the spectrum, the method used for the European Parliament elections in 2019 had an extreme version of super-regions/VSA – only 12 (13 including Gibraltar, as mentioned). However, the point nonetheless remains that the methods used in both the European Parliament elections and the EU Referendum redrew the voting maps of the UK accordingly, which proved that it can be done.

Let’s go back to what the UK under PR would look like. In London, the sheer amount of people per capita would require there to be several VSA. A good way to divide up these areas would be to have an equal amount of boroughs – 4 – in each (except for the City of London (CoL), which would be its own VSA due to its unusual status as a separate entity to the rest of London as a whole). This is illustrated in the image below, which I have modified using Photoshop to divide a map of London’s boroughs into these VSA. Each VSA could then have three MPs for each borough, leading to 12 MPs in each constituency area. There are actually echoes of this in the fact that prior to 1999, London was represented during European Parliament elections as a number of single-member constituencies: London South West, London North West, London South East, London North, London Central, London West, London East, London South Inner, and London North East. Where the CoL was included in those VSA, and how it operated accordingly, is unclear.

How London could look under PR, divided into VSA (original map of London boroughs taken from LondonMap360° - source)

The permutations of this could apply not just in London, but in the UK’s other most populated cities – Birmingham, Glasgow, and Manchester most prominently, all of which have their own systems of boroughs or administrative areas. Yorkshire as a whole, meanwhile, contains nearly as many people as the whole of Scotland, so would require more than one VSA. Meanwhile, much less densely populated areas, such as Northumberland or Argyll & Bute, would require only one VSA. This system would lead to a fairer and, yes, more proportional system, in which people would be motivated to vote.

It wouldn’t be perfect, of course. To give an example, Hackney, where I’m from, would see three MPs elected as part of an Inner North Central VSA, as mentioned. Those three MPs might be one each from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Conservatives (though the latter only command a small amount of support in the borough); or those three might be one each from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens. How the Conservatives would work with MPs from other parties in practice in VSAs would await to be seen – there may be a process of horse-trading - but the aforementioned coalition between the Tories and the Lib Dems after 2010’s GE illustrated that it is possible, not to mention the also afore-mentioned previous history of cross-party London MEPs being elected to European Parliaments under PR during the period that the UK was a member-state of the EU. That could still leave candidate MPs from other parties not represented – and therefore other, smaller parties could still find themselves side-lined under PR. Nonetheless, they would be side-lined less than under FPTP, in which only one party is represented in a constituency. A PR system would be particularly beneficial to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, who would have a bigger representation in VSA.

This video from Australia, describing their system under PR, is a good explainer. As you can see, six candidates are whittled down to three via the votes being reallocated using a Single Transferrable Vote (STV) system. Despite this clear enough explanation, the transition from FPTP to PR still remains a mind-boggling complicated process. You can see this when comparing Australia’s neighbour New Zealand, a beacon of sanity at the moment in the world (not having Rupert Murdoch in charge of much of its media probably helps). New Zealand also uses PR, but with a mixed-member system (MMP), which does retain elements of FPTP; the comparison with the UK system, and how New Zealand’s PR MMR system would apply, is complicated.

So too is the different versions or PR that can be applied. Wikipedia lists some sixteen different versions of PR, including models such as ‘Bi-proportional Appointment’, which applies mathematical modelling to election results to achieve proportionality. 

Whether a UK system under PR should adopt Party-List, STV, or MMR methods remains a moot point. Fundamentally, though, they would still be more democratic than the current system, even while some of these use FPTP as part of their system. 

In any case, lots of people in the UK want our election system changed, as part of a wider shake-up that should include a re-evaluation of the House of Lords as an entirely unelected body characterised by cronyism. Labour For a New Democracy is one of them. A coalition of pro-PR groups such as the afore-mentioned ERS, Make Votes Matter, and Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform, Labour For A New Democracy (they’re serious people who don’t appear to do acronyms) plan to take the case to Labour’s conference in September, backed by 188 Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) around the country. The fact that so many CLPs back PR makes the campaign an increasingly prominent issue, even if it hasn’t been backed to the same extent by the Trade Unions.

PR may not be a panacea for all the UK’s troubles, which have only been amplified by Brexit and the pandemic. But adopting it would lead to a revitalised political system based that would alleviate the worst aspects of cronyism and factionalism. PR shows another way. New Zealand achieved it in 1996, albeit by keeping elements of FPTP, as mentioned, via MMR. It must happen if we are to truly call ourselves a modern European democracy in the 21st century – whether in the EU or not.

Apocalypse Bunker Discs podcast episode

You can listen to an interview with me on the brilliant Apocalypse Bunker Discs podcast series, hosted by man-about-town Oliver Turtle. Operating on a similar model to 'Desert Island Discs', it involves the interviewee selecting eight tracks that they’d take to a post-apocalyptic underground bunker, and talking about their significance, as well as weaving in related songs (denoted in the episode chapters below with a plus sign) along the way around the main selection. There’s also a choice of one film and one book.

All the episodes are interesting in their own right, and worth a listen, with some truly bizarre, fantastical, and esoteric choices. And Taylor Swift, for some reason.

Listen here

Episode Chapters:

00 Theme Music: Beneath The Comatose Lagoon (00m 00s)
01 Introducing...Dominic Simpson, Node of the Leftfield Scene (00m 54s)
02 Steeleye Span - 'All Around My Hat' (02m 18s)
03 + Broadcast & The Focus Group - 'Seancing' (07m 38s)
04 The Art of Noise - 'Close (To The Edit)' (08m 23s)
05 Velvet Underground - 'All Tomorrow’s Parties' (14m 08s)
06 + Nico & Serge Gainsbourg - 'Striptease' (18m 20s)
07 + Cornelius Cardew - 'Treatise' (22m 55s)
08 Codeine - 'Cave In' (25m 30s)
09 Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Storm' (29m 35s)
10 + Glen Branca - 'Lesson No. 1' (36m 04s)
11 Land of Kush - 'Iceland Spar' (37m 40s)
12 V/VM - 'Lady in Red (Dancing With Meat)' (41m 47s)
13 + V/VM - 'True' (45m 22s)
14 + Oneohtrix Point Never - 'There’s Nobody Here' (46m 33s)
15 Terry Riley - 'In C' (48m 16s)
16 Dream Maps - '100 Bars in C-Minor / UVB-76' (54m 47s)
17 + Deodato - 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' (01h 02m 18s)
18 Arthur C Clarke - Reads From 2001: A Space Oddysey (01h 04m 23s)
19 + Bill Boyd and His Cowboy Ramblers - 'Blue Danube Waltz' (01h 06m 40s)
20 Centerprise - A Hackney Autobiography (01h 07m 36s)

Why the current crisis strengthens the case for a Green New Deal and a more sustainable society – especially after last year’s General Election

Photo: Syaibatul Hamdi [link]

It’s a strange feeling at the moment, being stuck in lockdown during the coronavirus. I’ve been meaning to write about what has happened in the last sixth months for a while now, but this seems like a timely period to so. The streets of London feel eerily empty, particularly at night, with the shots of Central London I’ve seen from a friend resembling something out of 28 Days Later (ubiquitously soundtracked by Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s suitably apocalyptic ‘East Hastings’).



As the world heads inexorably towards recession, with no end in sight for lockdown in many countries, the fragile nature of the global economy has become more and more exposed. The Great Recession (the term often used for the 2007-9 Financial Crisis) exposed neo-liberalism’s failures, but was supposedly rectified pretty quickly: in the UK, the tax payers rescued the banks, so that financial speculators could carry on as before. Ordinary people weren’t asked if we wanted to bail out the failing banks, of course; the Government knew that it had no choice, because the banks were too big to fail, and so went ahead regardless. Despite huge job losses, people went back to work, and then socialised. We were all told to feel better that things were back to normal, despite the fact that we knew that the financial crash had led to the near collapse of the financial system as we knew it. Few lessons were learnt in terms of any meaningful financial regulation that could prevent another financial crash from happening again – but that would’ve meant the Government challenging a deregulated financial sector that has become the main driver of the nation’s economy. Meanwhile, hedge fund speculators made money from the economic chaos and austerity, as they always do – including Jacob Rees-Mogg’s father, as I’ve pointed out in a previous post – and the economy carried on being based around assets such as an overheated housing market. So while plenty of people got laid off, rents, especially in London, didn’t go down.

Things feel very different now, though. The Great Recession was able to recover because things beyond the essentials were open. Beyond the Bank of England’s quantitative easing and the buying of essential goods, people were able to pump money into the economy from doing stuff rather than being housebound, whether entertainment or shopping or a thousand other social activities. In contrast, no amount of liquidity can stopgap the fact that this time people are physically not allowed out to their place of work (admittedly electronic communication has mitigated this somewhat). Once again, the ordinary taxpayer in the UK will be the one to pay to bailout large companies, including Richard Branson’s Virgin, without being asked if we want to, while small businesses are likely to be the ones really feeling the heat, despite Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s best intentions – and, of course, if some of them go to the wall, they will be rich pickings once again for the hedge funds and various disaster capitalists who take advantage of economic chaos. 

The failings of the capitalist system when faced with the Coronavirus couldn’t have come at a worse time for the UK, because of another big shock to the system: Brexit. Yet it’s been fascinating to watch the tabloid’s handling of both. 

I’ve already discussed how the tabloids and much of the mainstream media has been deliberately relentless in their anti-EU propaganda, for a variety of reasons. That was ever more obvious in the run-up to the snap General Election (GE) in December 2019, but added to that was another element: that the mainstream media, hand-in-hand with the Government, were clearly terrified of the prospect of Corbyn in No.10. Corbyn didn’t play the media game that the Eton-educated Boris Johnson, who was famously part of the Bullingdon Club, knew so consummately. The newspapers didn’t have privileged access to him in the way that they did with other politicians. His radical manifesto of change included defunding private schools, from which many top-tier politicians come from, together with threats to stop corporate tax breaks, stamp out wage inequality, put energy and water in public ownership, and challenge the dominance of overseas tax avoidance. It was the latter ambition, especially, that put him in perpetual opposition to the City and a global economic system entrenched in money made in tax havens, as Financial Times journalist Nicholas Shaxon’s engrossing book Treasure Islands reveals – not to mention the tax-avoiding owners of the tabloids. Not only were Corbyn’s plans anathema to Tory values and right-wing ideology; it also represented a threat to the interests of the system generally. Together with a serious radical socialist program, it was obvious that the establishment and the wealthy elite had to do whatever it took to demonise Corbyn as much as they could – and the way to do that was through the bulk of the mainstream media.

So despite Corbyn coming from a long tradition of English radicalism going back to the Levellers and the Diggers, the tabloids neutered the threat of a Corbyn administration in power by appealing to the lowest common denominator instinct of the British public: by casting him as a heretic, a ‘traitor’ who ‘despises this great country’, a ‘danger’ to ‘our way of life’, ‘unpatriotic’, ‘Jezbollah’, and ‘an IRA sympathiser’ (the truth is more complex). He was depicted deliberately as somehow ‘anti-British’, a 'collaborator' with 'the enemy' (for the tabloids to exist, there always is 'an enemy' to conveniently rail against).

 Declaration by the Diggers, depicting themselves as "true Levellers", in 1649; public domain

Deliberately targeting the older population of the country, it was impressed upon us that it was he who would lead ‘Labour’s £11,000 hit to your pension’. Meanwhile, the Brexit Party, in virtual alliance with the Government, focused on issues such as World War II and fishing, which they knew had a certain flashpoint in the psyche of some Brits, seizing disingenuously on war clichés and grievances in the fisheries industry when, again, in the case of the latter the truth remains much more complex, rather than simply being boiled down to slogans such as ‘Our Waters, Our Fish’ – not to mention the fact that Nigel Farage, as a member of the European Parliament Fisheries Committee, only attended one out of 42 meetings.

At the same time as this, we now know that the Tory Government had secret connections with the Russian Government, at the very same time that the media was vilifying Corbyn as a ‘Communist spy’. And it wasn’t just the Government: the links between Farage and the Brexit Party and the Russian Government are well-known too – and involve large amounts of money. Time and time again, there have been proven connections between all of them, with Farage and The Brexit Party voting against EU resolutions to stop Russian election meddling – while lecturing the rest of the country on patriotism. The vilification not only ensured another five years of the Tories in power, then, but also served as a convenient distraction that covered up links between No.10, Farage/The Brexit Party, Vote Leave (run by Matthew Elliott), and the Kremlin, and shadowy free market figures in the US such as Steve Bannon. And it also served as a convenient distraction to the various, mind-bendingly vast Byzantine strands that orbit around pro-Brexit activity in 55 Tufton Street in London, from the Taxpayer’s Alliance, Leave.EU, numerous right-wing think tanks, various climate change deniers, to obscure Canadian web analytical companies and involvement with the US and Russian Governments. Just some of these strands are explored in the image below:

Graphic creator: unknown. If this is your work, please get in touch and I will credit you

The Sun has had form on this, of course. They castigated the previous Labour leader, Ed Milliband, depicting his deceased father as “The man who hated Britain – what did Milliband Snr. really believe in? The answer should disturb everyone who loves this country”. Desperately searching for any way to smear Milliband Jr., they picked a random photo of him eating food. For those who can remember further back, they meted out similar ‘punishment’ to Neil Kinnock in 1992. This insidious thought process and faux appeal to patriotism has reappeared and again in the newspaper, and last December’s GE, with Corbyn the victim, was no different. As ever, appearance rather than the underlying reality was all. Yet the disturbing thing was that this time it wasn’t just confined to the tabloids. The Telegraph was just as bad, sycophantically demanding that “It’s time critics saw Boris for the Churchillian figure he is”. But less predictably, it also featured more subtly in the BBC’s coverage. When Johnson bumbled his way shambolically through a Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph in Whitehall in 2019, including laying the wreath upside down, the BBC used footage instead of Johnson laying the wreath in a much smarter demeanour in 2016, then later dubiously claimed that it was an ‘error’. During that same Remembrance Sunday back in 2016, two newspapers claimed that Corbyn “broke into a dance” on the way to the Cenotaph, which we now know was a lie. Another ‘error’ by the BBC, meanwhile, was when the BBC edited out the incredulous laughter from the audience on Question Time in reaction to Johnson being asked a question about how important it is for people in power to tell the truth. Then, a day before the GE, Laura Kuenssberg reported that the postal votes were already “looking pretty grim for Labour in a lot of parts of the country”. 

The insidious culminated effect on this was a character assassination that slowly chipped away at the public’s belief that Corbyn and Labour were sufficiently ‘patriotic’ and could offer a credible alternative path, while Johnson appeared unassailably the leader, his flaws airbrushed out. And the BBC, at least ostensibly, appeared to be complicit in this. 

Labour themselves didn’t help, either. Shambolic infighting and factionalism, perennial technological problems at a crucial time, and an inept handling of the anti-Semitism crisis all contributed to a disastrous election campaign. As leader of this, Corbyn remained a flawed character. Nonetheless, he was always unfairly destined to lose, despite determined campaigning by Labour volunteers in torrential, rain-soaked December weather. The establishment ‘won’, with the line sold that Johnson ‘will get Brexit done’, pushed by disingenuous journalists who knew few well that this is only the beginning of negotiations between the UK and the EU, in which the EU will have the upper hand due to its size and clout – something that they simply cannot concede, because then the whole premise of their anti-EU scapegoating, in which the UK has the upper hand, falls like a pack of dominos. Instead, the tabloids have pulled the wool over the public’s eyes, and continue to do so, including condoning the increasingly deranged, quasi-Stalinist behaviour by the unelected Dominic Cummings even as he has turned against them – along with the independence of the judiciary; The Confederation of British Industry (CBI); civil servants; Cabinet members who wouldn’t agree with his demands to have their advisers fired and replaced by individuals hand-picked by 10 Downing Street; and anyone else who he perceives to be standing in his way – while still castigating “unelected Brussels elites”. 

In case you’re wondering, these aren’t just my opinions. They’re also of a senior journalist.

It’s striking to see now, as the coronavirus takes hold, that the mainstream media still cannot bring themselves to offer anything critical, bringing to mind the GE. This is because they are still pushing the lie, foisted upon them by their tax-dodging owners, that only the Conservative party can be trusted with the economy. So instead the line has been pushed that only Johnson can get us out of this, with The Telegraph claiming that “Far from requiring delay, coronavirus strengthens our hand in post-Brexit talks”, while the fact that the UK could have joined the EU procurement scheme to secure ventilators and other coronavirus equipment to treat people affected by the virus, but chose not to - because the word Europe has become so toxic in the Conservative party - has been wilfully brushed aside. Indeed, the mainstream media have wilfully ignored just how dangerously reliant the UK could be on the EU if things get tough over medicine during the pandemic, particularly if an intransigent USA President intervenes. In a move that brings to mind Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, which focuses on ‘disaster capitalism’, the chaos taking place over the coronavirus could pave the way for the Tory Government to push through one its cherished aims, thwarted only because of repeated public opprobrium – to move towards an American-style healthcare system, away from a National Health Service (NHS) that the Conservatives opposed right from its forming in 1948 under a Labour administration. Pharmaceutical companies, some of whom could view the coronavirus pandemic as a unique business opportunity, know this well. This is touched on heavily in the podcast below by Global Justice Now (produced just before the coronavirus, so there’s no mention of it, but still chillingly relevant):



If there’s one conclusion that the last six months have taught us, it’s that the mainstream media for the most part cannot be trusted. With notable exceptions for some of the coverage by The Guardian (including particularly Carol Cadwalladr’s investigative work), Financial Times and the Mirror, the mainstream media savaged Corbyn while offering Johnson the easiest of rides, including still conveniently burying the withheld Government’s report on what exactly was going on between the British and Russian Governments. Going back to The Sun, in a classic case of audience manipulation, the newspaper has now put up logos saying 'I Love The NHS’, and encouraged its readers to applaud NHS staff during the pandemic crisis, while conveniently failing to mention that they themselves advocated sacking junior doctors on pay strike in 2016, who were angered at the Tories’ continual underfunding of the NHS:

If you took this photo, please let me know and I'll credit you

It also ignores the fact that the Tory party, who The Sun have consistently supported, have been consistently opposed to the NHS, as mentioned already, for a number of reasons (chief among them that the NHS is not a profit-making body). It’s no secret that many Tory politicians have advocated moving towards an American-style healthcare system. This is common for a paper which has consistently gaslighted its public, including classing dissenters over the Iraq war in the early 2000s as ‘traitors’ (despite the fact that the war took place under a Labour leadership) – now conveniently forgotten as public opinion has retrospectively shifted to against the invasion.  

It’s clear that society cannot go on after this crisis in the way that it could after The Great Recession just over ten years ago. Going ‘back to normal’ won’t paper over the cracks that have been exposed in our laissez-faire financial system, nor the increasing strain that climate change and dwindling peak oil reserves will place on the system. Despite what the naysayers have pronounced, there is an alternative. The coronavirus is just the start when taking into account the impacts that will take place as a result of climate change (more on this in a previous blog post) over the next ten years. Instead, this opportunity should be seized to embrace a new way of thinking. 

First, a major boycott campaign against the tabloids needs to be taken, in which the disinformation and smoke and mirrors pedalled within the publications are highlighted. Instead, people should be pointed to independent sources such as Open Democracy, Byline Times, Full Fact, The London Economic and Novara Media. 

Secondly, when the UK emerges from this crisis, the economy needs to be boldly and fundamentally re-orientated, so that power is taken away from deregulated finance and an alternative to the current financial system is prioritised. We need to embrace structural change via the Green New Deal (GND) – an ambitious new financial and political architecture that prioritises investments in decarbonisation techniques; a just transition for workers away from dependence on carbon and addiction to fossil fuels, as well as other greenhouse gas emitters; and attempts to embrace degrowth. All of these are huge fields in themselves, but the latter includes the notion that we should aim for a ‘steady-state’ economy, with a generally stable, moderately fluctuating population and per capita consumption.

There have been a number of versions of the GND in several countries; in this blog post, I’m going to focus on the UK one. In terms of day-to practice, the GND advocates alternative energy moves to prioritise the retrofitting of every building as much as possible, so as to cut back emissions and improve efficiency; for the UK’s electricity grid to be sourced from renewable energy, including wind, solar, hydro and geothermal electricity; and for a general move to energy efficiency.

Ann Pettifor’s book, The Case for The Green New Deal, offers some good suggestions on how this would work. As one of the original members of the Green New Deal UK Group, and Director of the organisation Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME), she points out that “mobile agents [i.e. on behalf of private market forces] have very little interest in supporting states that need to wean economies away from dependence on fossil fuels and from the all-powerful corporations that dig up, distribute and make money from those fuels”. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. Instead, Pettifor calls for the establishment of an international reserve currency, objectively independent of the sovereign power of any single, imperial state, as Keynes proposed at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference. Keynes was defeated, largely because of US opposition. The US Government insisted that their dollar be established as the world’s reserve currency instead – and got their wish. So it has been ever since, to the point where this status quo – where the US enjoys an inherent international advantage due to the dollar being the world’s default reserve currency, with the Federal Reserve acting as a global lender of last resort - was strengthened, rather than weakened, by the 2008 crisis. More, not less, power flowed into Wall Street as a result of that crisis, because of the money made through insurance as a result of the US making trillions of dollars available to European and Asian banks who were reeling from the crisis. Combined with this, the EU faced its own structural problems within the Eurozone. Pettifor points out what would have happened if the money the US lent, on favourable terms, was an independent reserve currency instead: “The ‘insurance’ is valuable at times of crisis, but it could just as easily have been provided by an independent, international central bank working with, and answerable to, all nations, not just the most powerful”. 

The result of this dominance of the US dollar has been that poor countries, unable to pay for essentials such as oil and gas in their own currencies, have been forced to use the dollar, making them subordinate to it. Meanwhile, deregulation in the latter part of the 20th century of the international financial system, particularly in the US and the UK, has meant that, in the words of Alan Greenspan, the world is once again governed by markets.

In addition to the above, Pettifor advocates the establishment of an international ‘clearing union’ for the settlement of credit and debts between nations, so that the burden of transformation is shared equitably. She advocates central bank intervention to manage cross-border capital flows, so that tax evasion can be combatted, with demands that offshore capital be brought back onshore. And she recommends that for carbon taxes to be effective, they need to be targeted at the biggest emitters. 

This also chimes with the work of another member of the Green New Deal UK Group member, Andrew Simms, a research associate with the Centre for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex and Fellow at the New Economics Foundation (nef – the acronym is always in lower-case, for some reason). Simms points out in his book Cancel The Apocalypse that “much more could be done to tackle the £100 billion-plus lost to the public purse in tax that has been avoided, evaded or simply not paid. A general tax-avoidance provision targeting the abuse of tax allowances could raise £10 billion a year if only half successful.” Simms also advocates green bonds, incentives on green savings, and a global Financial Transactions Tax that “applied at a rate of 0.05 per cent could raise more than £400 billion a year, several times the global aid budget. It could underpin a Green New Deal in the Global South, playing a significant role in enabling the majority world to adapt to climate change as well as ‘breaking the carbon chains of fossil fuel dependence’”. The EU had actually proposed a Financial Transactions Tax of its own (EU FTT), but faced opposition from the City (in fairness, some other member-states opposed the tax too). Simm’s backing of such a tax follows on from his work on ecological debt, which looks at the accumulated debt that wealthier countries owe from the plunder of much poorer countries, including resource exploitation. An example among many of this is the mining of cobalt, the chemical element that features in your smartphone, in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, located in central Africa. Other examples of ecological debt include the degradation of natural habitats, and occupation of environmental space for waste discharge. In all these case, developing countries have taken the brunt. 

More broadly, the GND in the UK has a set of principles, similar to its cousin in the US proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that need to be abided by in order for it to succeed. These include the aforementioned steady-state economy principle, which in itself includes nine ecological boundaries, and the notion of a ‘Plimsoll line’ that is both economic and ecological in the way that it caps the economy at a sustainable level, much of which I’ve covered at least to some extent in this blog post. That ‘Plimsoll line’ has already been demarcated by scientists, in line with cuts that rich countries have to make in terms of temperature rises. 

Photo of Plimsoll line on boat by Markus Brinkmann (link)

The nine ecological boundaries outlined are:

• Ozone depletion
• Biodiversity loss and extinctions
• Chemical pollution and the release of novel entities
• Climate change
• Ocean acidification
• Freshwater consumption and the global hydrological cycle
• Land system change
• Nitrogen and phosphorus flows to the biosphere and oceans
• Atmospheric aerosol loading.

The other principles include limited needs, not limitless wants; self-sufficiency; a mixed-market economy; a labour-intensive economy; a revised Universal Basic Income (UBI); monetary and fiscal coordination for a steady-state economy; abandon delusions of infinite expansion; GDP, ‘growth’ and the ecosystem. The last three include the issues of steady-state economies and degrowth once again. All of these principles are huge sub-sections in themselves that could have whole books devoted to them, and indeed have, by writers as disparate as George Monbiot and Jason Hickel. The subjects covered within these principles include the distressing spectacle of Colony Collapse Disorder - in which communities of bees are failing to pollinate as normal, due to a combination of factors including pesticides, with terrifying knock-on effects (a vast amount of the food we buy relies on honey-bee pollination, from coffee to butter), as covered in the video below – to the intricacies of trade, farming, rewilding, the geopolitical of food production, global job market regulation, melting ice sheets, ethical issues over macro- and microeconomic policy, agricultural initiatives, and attitudes to recycling. The list goes on.



On top of all that, though, the GND UK is revolutionary in another way. Tying in with the work mentioned above on degrowth, it dares to suggest that ‘national happiness’ is not necessarily tied to ever-increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In fact, more neoliberal societies and excessive materialism have if anything made us more neurotic, anxious, atomised and unhappy, and have exacerbated this through inequality, which in turn has led to social problems – the London Riots in 2011 being a prime example. While the question of what constitutes subjective life satisfaction is a deeply complicated one with a lot of variables – that intangible something that makes some people happy and some people not - various attempts at an ‘Index of Wellbeing’ have been made, including by the World Health Organisation, the UN’s Human Development Index and the Happy Planet Index. The work of Simms, too, does offer some clues, including with nef’s Centre for Well Being. This has included co-authoring a report called The Great Transition, which looked at the impacts on GDP in the UK of what would happen if the UK adopted the methods of the GND, leading to a national reduction in carbon emissions. He, along with colleagues, found that while growth would decrease somewhat, slightly reducing national incomes, egalitarianism would increase, leading to a corresponding drop in social costs that would make up for the drop in national income from a smaller GDP.

No country on the planet is perfect, but the Scandinavian/Nordic nations (along with certain other countries in Northern Europe and elsewhere, such as Japan and New Zealand) have grasped at least to some degree the value of a more equal society, particularly in terms of fostering an overall happiness, as Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have focused on in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone. “When income differences are bigger”, they point out, “social distances are bigger and social stratification more important”. Their conclusions are undeniable: sharing more equally leads to an overall better standard of well-being for everyone. This inevitably means moving away from an economic model in which “the high levels of inequality in our societies reflect the concentrations of power in our economic institutions”.

A new, fairer system could be ours if we want it – and when a country becomes more equal, it raises the well-being of everyone. However, for the GND to work in the UK, as Pettifor points out, it needs to have the public’s confidence, and that of financial backers who can finance the decarbonisation. The opposition from private interests, including particularly tax havens, and those who stash their money away in them, would be huge, particularly with initiatives (if they ever were to take place) such as the aforementioned Financial Transaction Tax – and the opposition would almost certainly include the aforementioned network of think-tanks and other organisations that revolve around 55 Tufton Street. The City, too, would raise objections, due to the fact that, as Simms puts it, “the commercial companies that trade in fossil fuels tend to be concentrated in a small handful of stock exchanges, and the City of London is a major one”. Never underestimate, too, the effects of NMBYism in the UK. For those who don’t know what that means, it stands for ‘Not In My Back Garden’, and is tied up with a certain kind of Daily Mail reader (you can Google the rest).

And yet, at just 17, Greta Thunberg has shown that protesting against the current system can capture the world’s imagination and be successful, as have the (admittedly flawed) activities of Extinction Rebellion. So, too, can progressive initiatives such as London’s Congestion Charge (and its newer cousin, Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ)), which faced opprobrium from many quarters at the time, yet has eventually become the new norm here in the capital. Similarly, Simms points to the bold steps that other cities - for example Freiburg in Germany, Ghent in Belgium, and Portland in the USA - have taken, so that polluting cars have been sidelined in favour of initiatives such as the increasing presence of public transport and cycling. The Plimsoll Line, mentioned earlier, is yet another example. The public mentality can change, if initiatives are done properly. It can be done. In addition, the ordinary taxpayer holds more sway over global financial markets than they think. As Pettifor puts it: “We must grasp that power. Only then can we begin to demand ‘terms and conditions’ for taxpayer-backed subsidies and guarantees – and use that power to regulate and subordinate the globalised financial sector to the interests of society as a whole”. Here’s Pettifor talking some more about how the GND in the UK can be financed, followed by a video by nef on their own approach to its funding, including borrowing, taxing the wealthiest, and the phasing out of subsidies for fossil fuels: 






However, in the UK, the GND is unlikely to work as long as the tabloids and right-wing organisations have such a vice-like grip on the public’s imagination. Which goes back to my first point about what needs to happen when we re-emerge from the pandemic, whenever that is: the tabloids cannot be allowed to go on normal, in which any kind of positive progress in society is obstructed with lies and untruths, and get away with it. New, robust laws need to be put into place to hold them to account and counter their disinformation. 

Finally, in case you’re wondering if a lot of this stuff sounds eerily familiar – that’s because it is. Much of it is in the present manifestos of the Labour Party and the Greens, the only two parties that people should seriously consider voting in the next GE for the sake of our future. Yes, that’s the manifestos that the tabloids told you were ‘unaffordable’ – and yet now the Tories are unavoidably forced to pump millions and millions of pounds into the economy because of the coronavirus pandemic, in order to shore up the economy in a crisis, recalling what followed the crash ten years ago. This illustrates that the money always has been there – it’s simply the willpower that’s been lacking. An alternative to the status quo is possible – if only we are prepared to put our minds to it.