Wednesday 29 June 2022: Here are 9 questions that are currently preoccupying me. Do they concern you as well? Do you have better answers to them than the ones I provide?
1.After Wakefield, is Labour on course to win outright in 2024? I don’t think so. Having canvassed in the town during the bye-election, I found no huge enthusiasm for Starmer’s Labour Party. True, it enjoyed a 12% swing from the Conservatives; but that was on a very low turnout (40%); and the Tories hardly campaigned to hold on to the seat, and many of its supporters didn’t vote. That won’t be the case in 2024.
2.Is Johnson’s premiership doomed? I am certain it isn’t between now and the next GE. He won’t resign because he considers he has a mandate from the majority of his MPs and the electorate to ‘get on with the job’. Indeed, Johnson has convinced himself he has only just got started as PM. I am not even sure I want him to resign, cynically thinking that having him in post between now and 2024 will help the opposition parties to defeat the Tories next time round.
3.Is a form of militant militarism becoming the new ‘normal’? I am beginning to think it is, based on the increased number of existing and retired generals I hear on our media – notably on R4’s Today Programme – talking up vigorously the need to increase significantly defence expenditure when they’re not offering strategic advice about how best to beat back the Russian forces in Ukraine and thwart its further expansion westwards, which they assume will happen if we don’t radically re-arm. Equally, I am astonished how all of them are not subjected to critical questioning by interviewers. I am not a conscientious objector; but I am someone who finds objectionable the assumption that waging war is a sensible way of resolving international disputes. Sometimes it undoubtedly is. But diplomacy always entails fewer fatalities.
4.Exactly what ‘values’ are we defending in our support for Ukraine in its war with Russia? Clearly one value that is being defended is the right of countries to have their borders and sovereignty respected. But to frame our condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a binary clash of rival value systems is surely to absolve ourselves of our own alleged war crimes, committed as recently as this century in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is then to pretend our wars are just and only theirs are evil. And what is so special about those of our values which underpin a mode of economic life which distributes income and wealth so unevenly, leading even to the establishment of a national network of foodbanks? And don’t get me started on our democratic procedures which are often, in practice, very undemocratic.
5.Should Ukraine demonstrate a greater public willingness to agree a peace deal with Russia? I think it should, and with the help of its allies, not least because the world’s attention is already showing signs of fading, and many countries don’t share our negative view of Russia’s actions; and the collateral damage from the conflict, including the very high number of civilian fatalities, needs to be reversed. If and when these negotiations happen, Ukraine I guess has to be armed to the teeth to deter future Russian incursions, an opinion, I recognize, that sits a bit uncomfortably with the point I made earlier about the rise of new forms of militarism. Whatever, it’s surely silly, even irresponsible, bombast to say, as our PM does repeatedly, that the war in Ukraine has to be prosecuted until Russia looses it. That will take a very long time, I am thinking; and it is unlikely, in any event, to happen. Meanwhile, more and more civilian deaths will result.
6.Has the class war ended? I am sure it hasn’t. And I think I know why many on the Right want to persuade us that it has. Social and economic inequality is endlessly reproduced by people who either do well out of it or who are too institutionalised to see what is front of them, and who don’t really care when they do.
7.What’s pushing up inflation? Not public sector worker’s wage demands, I am pretty sure, but rather private sector profits, grounded in making money out of the rest of us who buy its products and services, nearly 90 percent of which over the past few years is accounted for by just 25 companies. After a decade of wage stagnation and a pandemic that pushed millions into poverty, the political Right has some nerve to blame the current cost of living crisis on workers attempting to resist pay cuts and changes to their conditions of employment which they judge will make them worse off.
8.Is China our enemy? It ought not to be, but it is increasingly being constructed as such. Few days pass without a western media source publishing a negative story about China. And the number of books being published, particularly in the USA, that do the same is huge. Currently, the West is adopting a ‘compete, counter and contain’ approach in shaping its foreign policy options. My preference is an ‘engage, but hedge and criticise’ stance. I have written about what this might entail HERE
9.Is Brexit working? It isn’t economically, that’s for sure! And those who argued to the contrary in 2016 need to own this fact more. As for the rest of it, given my long-standing Eurosceptic views, I am less convinced that exiting the EU has caused irreparable damage. I have written about this as well HERE