It was the rise of the Davos class that sealed America’s fate

Naomi Klein in The Guardian

They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.

But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine – is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?

Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present.

At the same time, they have witnessed the rise of the Davos class, a hyper-connected network of banking and tech billionaires, elected leaders who are awfully cosy with those interests, and Hollywood celebrities who make the whole thing seem unbearably glamorous. Success is a party to which they were not invited, and they know in their hearts that this rising wealth and power is somehow directly connected to their growing debts and powerlessness.

For the people who saw security and status as their birthright – and that means white men most of all – these losses are unbearable.

Donald Trump speaks directly to that pain. The Brexit campaign spoke to that pain. So do all of the rising far-right parties in Europe. They answer it with nostalgic nationalism and anger at remote economic bureaucracies – whether Washington, the North American free trade agreement the World Trade Organisation or the EU. And of course, they answer it by bashing immigrants and people of colour, vilifying Muslims, and degrading women. Elite neoliberalism has nothing to offer that pain, because neoliberalism unleashed the Davos class. People such as Hillary and Bill Clinton are the toast of the Davos party. In truth, they threw the party.

Trump’s message was: “All is hell.” Clinton answered: “All is well.” But it’s not well – far from it.

Neo-fascist responses to rampant insecurity and inequality are not going to go away. But what we know from the 1930s is that what it takes to do battle with fascism is a real left. A good chunk of Trump’s support could be peeled away if there were a genuine redistributive agenda on the table. An agenda to take on the billionaire class with more than rhetoric, and use the money for a green new deal. Such a plan could create a tidal wave of well-paying unionised jobs, bring badly needed resources and opportunities to communities of colour, and insist that polluters should pay for workers to be retrained and fully included in this future.

It could fashion policies that fight institutionalised racism, economic inequality and climate change at the same time. It could take on bad trade deals and police violence, and honour indigenous people as the original protectors of the land, water and air.

People have a right to be angry, and a powerful, intersectional left agenda can direct that anger where it belongs, while fighting for holistic solutions that will bring a frayed society together.

Such a coalition is possible. In Canada, we have begun to cobble it together under the banner of a people’s agenda called The Leap Manifesto, endorsed by more than 220 organisations from Greenpeace Canada to Black Lives Matter Toronto, and some of our largest trade unions.

Bernie Sanders’ amazing campaign went a long way towards building this sort of coalition, and demonstrated that the appetite for democratic socialism is out there. But early on, there was a failure in the campaign to connect with older black and Latino voters who are the demographic most abused by our current economic model. That failure prevented the campaign from reaching its full potential. Those mistakes can be corrected and a bold, transformative coalition is there to be built on.

That is the task ahead. The Democratic party needs to be either decisively wrested from pro-corporate neoliberals, or it needs to be abandoned. From Elizabeth Warren to Nina Turner, to the Occupy alumni who took the Bernie campaign supernova, there is a stronger field of coalition-inspiring progressive leaders out there than at any point in my lifetime. We are “leaderful”, as many in the Movement for Black Lives say.

So let’s get out of shock as fast as we can and build the kind of radical movement that has a genuine answer to the hate and fear represented by the Trumps of this world. Let’s set aside whatever is keeping us apart and start right now.

Theresa May has some cheek going cap in hand to India, an ex-British colony, for a post-Brexit deal

Harriet Williamson in The Independent


Theresa May is visiting India this week cup in hand, to ask for a favourable post-Brexit trade deal. There’s arrogance in May’s return to Britain’s former colony, expectant that India will come up with the goods, but ultimately, the move shows how much the tables have turned.

Many people, particularly in my grandparents’ generation, still view British imperialism and empire with a dewy-eyed longing. The reality is, of course, that British rule in India caused the deaths of millions of people through administrative failure and imperialist cruelty. Numerous famines, outbreaks of cholera, the arbitrary and rushed drawing of the border between India and the newly-created Pakistan, mass-displacement, and the destruction of India’s cottage industries left the country impoverished and unstable.

Imperialism set India up as both Britain’s workhouse and convenient marketplace, and when India finally gained independence, it was reduced to one of the world’s poorest economies. For Britain to come begging now that we’ve made such a mess of things with our yet-undefined Brexit, opposed by 48.1 per cent of the electorate, is laughable.

Although a number of the more vehemently right-wing newspapers chose to focus on May’s ‘hardball’ stance on immigration during her visit, they didn’t pick up on the incongruity of the Prime Minister haggling over “Indians with no right to remain in the UK” whilst hankering after a lucrative trade deal.

At a tech summit in Delhi, May was pressured by business leaders including Sir James Dyson and Karan Bilimoria, founder of Cobra beer, to welcome more skilled Indian workers and students to Britain. The Government’s current position seems to involve the hope that India will still sign a cushy deal with us, while we crack down on Indians in Britain who’ve outstayed their frosty welcome.

The political conversation in Britain has, despite the influence of Corbyn, shifted perceptibly to the right. May knows that to keep the would-be-Ukippers and Brexit-devotees onside, she must act ‘tough on those foreign people’ despite surely recognising that she cannot turn back the clock on globalization.

The isolationist, shut-the-door sentiments that brought us Brexit are not going to serve Britain well when it comes to making international trade agreements, and to belief otherwise is a self-important indulgence that we can no longer afford. We live, for better or worse, in an interconnected world, and the issue of migration cannot be wiped off the table during trade discussions.

India wants access to the UK labour market for skilled workers, and the UK government wants to pander to the narrative that immigrants are an unnecessary scourge on our increasingly less green and pleasant land. On the basis of this impasse, a free trade agreement seems like a childish fantasy.

I wouldn’t blame India for putting up two fingers to Theresa May and Britain.

European Parliament considers plan to let individual Brits opt-in to keep their EU citizenship

Jon Stone in The Independent


The European Parliament is to consider a plan that would allow British citizens to opt-in and keep their European Union citizenship – and its associated benefits – once the UK leaves the EU.

The proposal, which has been put before a parliamentary committee as an amendment, would grant the citizens of former member states the voluntary right to retain “associate citizenship” of the EU, such as after Brexit.

Associate citizens would be allowed to keep free movement across the EU as full citizens currently enjoy and would be allowed to vote in European Parliament elections, meaning they were still represented in Brussels.

The proposal could potentially give Brits who live and work across borders a workaround to the disruption caused by the Leave vote – and young people looking to flee an increasingly insular UK greater choice over where to move to.

Amendment 882 was proposed by Charles Goerens, a liberal MEP from Luxembourg. It will be considered by the European Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee, which is drawing up a report with recommendations on “Possible evolutions of and adjustments to the current institutional set-up of the European Union”.

Brexit campaigners in Britain reacted with anger to the idea, arguing that it would discriminate against Leave voters and that it was “an outrage”.

The amendment suggests the provision of “European associate citizenship for those who feel and wish to be part of the European project but are nationals of a former Member State; offers these associate citizens the rights of freedom of movement and to reside on its territory as well as being represented in the Parliament through a vote in the European elections on the European lists”.

Though the British Government has been coy on what it wants Britain’s post-Brexit future to look like, it is likely that British citizens will lose the automatic right to live and work in the EU after Brexit.

This is because Prime Minister Theresa May has made clear that she would like to restrict freedom of movement from EU countries to the UK, a policy that would likely be reciprocated by the EU for British citizens.

Jayne Adye, director of the Get Britain Out campaign described the proposal as divisive and said it was “totally unacceptable” for British people to retain the advantages of EU membership.

“This is an outrage. The EU is now attempting to divide the great British public at the exact moment we need unity. 17.4 million people voted to Leave the EU on 23 June and as a result the UK as a whole will get Brexit,” she said.

“Brexit means laws which impact the people of the UK will be created by accountable politicians in Westminster. It is totally unacceptable for certain citizens in the UK to subject themselves to laws which are created by politicians who are not accountable the British people as a whole. Discriminating against people based on their political views shows there are no depths the EU will not sink to.”

Britain voted to leave the EU at a referendum in June but has not yet begun the negotiation process. The Government is currently embroiled in a legal battle over whether it can trigger negotiations using Royal Prerogative, without consulting Parliament.

In Brexit Britain there will be no benefit caps for the multinationals

Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian


Take back control. Those three words now govern our politics. They sum up why Britain is leaving Europe, and they make up the yardstick by which Theresa May will be judged. Yet already, in the past few days, their hollowness has been exposed.

This story moves fast – and begins with a threat. Not a subtle moue of displeasure from behind an expensive pair of cufflinks, but a bluntly put, publicly issued ransom. At the end of September the boss of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, goes to one of the car industry’s biggest annual events, the Paris Motor Show, and declares to reporters that Brexit means the UK now has to cut him “a deal”. If cars made in Britain are to face tariffs on export to Europe, he wants “some kind of compensation”.

Extraordinary: one of the biggest manufacturers in Britain effectively wants danger money to carry on investing here. Even more remarkably, Nissan has behind it the full might of the Japanese government, which sent 15 pages of demands on behalf of some of the country’s biggest businesses – along with the veiled threat to pull out of the UK.

Faster than you can say Micra, Ghosn is invited to Downing Street. Within two weeks he has a face-to-face with the prime minister. The UK has just opted to sever four decades of relations with its biggest trading partner, the government has no fiscal policy and her own party is in turmoil – yet May still clears her diary for the Nissan boss.

Then, a few days back, Ghosn announces Sunderland will not only carry on working, but will now make the new-model Qashqai. The obvious question is: what did his company get from our government? Yet business secretary Greg Clark refuses to divulge any detail of how much or even what kind of taxpayer support has been offered to Nissan – after all, it’s only our money. Instead, he waves off the deal as just a slightly prickly chat in the senior common room.

“One can overcomplicate these things,” he airily tells MPs at the end of October. A mere month after Ghosn made his initial threat, what apparently changed his mind was the government’s “intention to find common ground and to pursue discussions in a rational and civilised way”.

To say this doesn’t add up is beside the point: it’s not meant to. Clark and May obviously don’t want a rival carmaker or any other multinational operating in Britain to know how far they will go to keep them onshore. But if the multimillionaire boss of a £33bn auto giant only wanted a “rational and civilised” discussion, , he could try a Melvyn Bragg podcast. The Qashqai has been a massive seller for Nissan; the company would not have opted to make the next model out of Sunderland merely on the basis of some comforting ministerial purrs.

A source tells Reuters that “the government gave Nissan a written commitment of extra support in the event Brexit reduces its competitiveness”. The carmaker itself acknowledges that its executive committee made its decision upon receiving the “support and assurances of the UK government”. And the former deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, warns that such deals could cost the taxpayer “colossal amounts of money”. How much? Were the EU to slap on 10% extra on British-made cars, the tariff bill for Nissan UK alone would come to just shy of £300m a year. If May and Clark were to try to cover half of that, they would be extending an unprecedented level of subsidy to just one company. Now imagine those same terms replicated for the other big car exporters: Toyota (which before the referendum warned of cutbacks if Britain left the EU), Honda, Jaguar Land Rover …

What you’ve just seen, then, is a foretaste of the way big business will deal with the government in Brexit Britain. First the threat, then the bargain, and finally, with unministerial haste, an expensive handshake behind closed doors. Each time, the public will be none the wiser, even as their government commits them to perhaps costly support for some company or sector, each one claiming strategic importance. And don’t think it will stop at cars.
Within 48 hours of the Brexit vote, the National Farmers’ Union was preparing for an extraordinary meeting of its council to draw up demands for Downing Street. Top of the list was the £2.4bn in subsidies that farmers get each year from Brussels. Within weeks, the new chancellor Philip Hammond was promising to carry on the handouts until the end of this decade. He made similar offers to universities and businesses reliant on EU grants.


Almost inevitably, the British state becomes even more of a milch-cow for big businesses

Put these numbers in context. Starting this week, the government will cut the benefits it gives to 88,000 families. That is huge turmoil – and it will cut just £100m from the welfare bill. Yet at the same time, billions are being committed to keep sweet businesses from the pharmaceutical giants to the landowners of the south-west.

These are businesses that have already done very well out of taxpayers. Consider Nissan UK: Kevin Farnsworth, lecturer in social policy at the University of York and an expert on government subsidies, calculates that over the past two decades it has taken £782m in loans, grants and handouts from the British and European public. In upfront cash transfers alone that comes to £130m.

Farnsworth has calculated this figure by combing Nissan accounts as well as the grant documents from the British government and its various agencies. He has compiled a database for other major businesses, to be found at corporate-welfare-watch.org.uk.

Where this takes you is to the dirty secret of the British business model. From Margaret Thatcher onwards, successive governments have lured multinational investors by promising them access to the single market, a cheap, biddable workforce and a bunch of corporate sweeteners. It was the same offer Dublin made to the tax avoiders of Silicon Valley and – within its own narrow confines – it worked. As Farnsworth points out, Britain has reliably taken in proportionately more foreign direct investment than most of its competitors.

The problem is that now the UK can no longer guarantee access to 500 million European consumers, it will need to make its workers cheaper and even more flexible and offer more handouts.

Surveying this debacle, it strikes me that Lord Acton got it wrong. It’s not power that corrupts; it’s powerlessness. What do you bargain with, when three decades of deregulation and weakening of local and central government mean you have hardly any cards left in your hand? Almost inevitably, the British state becomes even more of a milch-cow for big businesses. Forget about foreigners coming over here and taking our benefits; now think about multinationals cherry-picking our benefits. That trade-off isn’t rhetorical: it’s real. That money will come from our social security, our hospitals, our schools. Brexit Britain: a soft touch for corporate welfare. Is this what was meant by control?