On Irksome Erdington

No, Keir Starmer. Labour's by-election victory was not "one of the best results we’ve had in Erdington for many, many years." 30 seconds with Wikipedia would dispel that notion. It is, however, the best parliamentary by-election result for Labour since he became leader. And as we're in Year Zero territory because the period between summer 2015 and winter 2019 never happened, according to his rewrite of Labour Party history Starmer is correct. But it's not a disaster either - just a middling, mediocre performance.

The majority Paulette Hamilton won was 3,266, lower than the nadir of the last election where Jack Dromey bequeathed 3,601. But this is a by-election which, as a second order election (i.e. an election viewed by a lot of the electorate as one that "doesn't matter"), turn out was well down. 35,000 Erdington residents hit the polls in 2019. On Thursday only 17k made the same journey, a story not just of by-elections this year but by-elections at any time. It's pointless comparing raw numbers because the comparison is not like-for-like. What matters is the proportion of the vote, and here Labour were up just over five points while the Tories fell by four. Had the proportion fallen, as per Batley and Spen, then Keir Starmer would be in trouble. But it didn't and the knives stay in the kitchen drawer for the time being.

That said, the result must be a personal disappointment for Starmer. Having seen the Liberal Democrats chalk up two famous victories, to properly cement his leadership and banish the mutterings the Labour leader needs a triumph of his own. Preferably a seat taken directly from the Tories to show the party and the press that he's a coming man, consolidating a marginal seat and making it safe would have done in Erdington's case. But it didn't happen. And there are two reasons for this. People haven't forgot Boris Johnson's partygoing antics, but his efforts to place the issue in abeyance with the Met investigation has worked. Though the Prime Minister also has a certain Vladimir Putin to thank for making sure his wrongdoing is buried under the weight of an international crisis. The visceral anger that fizzed around a month ago has petered out, and so there was nothing for Starmer to capitalise on.

This might not have mattered if Labour actually had something to offer, but the leadership have decided to say nothing and offer even less. Not even taking the Tories to task for being soft on Russia, not going hard on sanctions, and hinting we should be thinking about no fly zones have made people sit up and take notice. Voting against the Tories is never enough, you have to give them something to support. And the nice hair cut and saying "we're not left wing" ain't it. Whatever the case, while Starmer is safe for the time being it appears his de facto deputy is not.

"Ah!", might come a reply from a right wing Labour wiseacre, "if socialism was the answer then why did the literal Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition perform so poorly?" Good question. Coming third is barely a consolation if there are 34 percentage points separating you from the second placed Tories, and were miles away from saving the deposit. I can divine the explanations in next week's Socialist, blaming a media blackout and the fact their candidate, Dave Nellist, wasn't invited to a BBC-run hustings. TUSC were going from a standing start, and the vote tally did not reflect the enthusiasm for socialist ideas found on the doorstep. But a marker has been put down for next time. I could almost write the article for them. The problem is the Socialist Party, the main component of TUSC, has, for all its vanguardism, a wonky idea about class that is less sophisticated than its new comrades in the People's Alliance of the Left. And, despite the "serious" reputation it has on the far left, the SP is congenitally unable to carry out the consistent work necessary to establish, maintain, and expand a base in working class communities. This is reflected in the life of TUSC itself, which is but an electoral appendage with no independent existence or means of becoming a new left party in embryo. That role, of course, falls to the SP itself.

Therefore, the 360 votes it polled are not the beginning of anything. TUSC will be packed away and might be seen at the next general election, but it might not. It stood in 2015 and polled 212 votes on that occasion, but evidently was packed away and nothing was done to try and cohere that vote and build outwards from it. Perhaps it will be different this time, but as the best predictors of future behaviour is past behaviour, I won't be holding my breath.

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Making Sense of Nuclear Psychosis

A collective psychosis has gripped a band of Twitter users, politicians, and columnists over Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Without any cognisance of consequence, a narrow spectrum of Labour warmongers, liberals, and Tories call for a NATO-enforced no fly zone in the skies above the East European battlefield. Decades of cheering bombing practice over Middle Eastern targets has eroded their collective sense. It's almost as if you have to sit them in a chair and patronisingly explain to them that the Syrian and Iraqi regimes, the Taliban, and the people of Yemen don't have the means to strike back at the Western alliance whereas Russia does. And the gift of its retaliation goes beyond random knife attacks and the occasional suicide bomb. With six thousand nuclear warheads on tap, it is quite capable of incinerating its enemies. Seeing their newspapers go up in smoke is little consolation for hundreds of millions of deaths and an irradiated Threads-style hellscape.

Are these people really that stupid? No. They know why NATO won't be taking up arms against Russia any time soon. Some might privately agree that a no fly zone cannot be implemented because it's a dumb idea. But they go ahead and say it anyway. But why? What possible good can come from winding up their readers and social media audiences by arguing a blossoming of mushroom clouds is worth risking to show how tough the West is?

Turning to someone who knew a thing or two about causing outrage might be helpful. Better known for planting bombs with the Rote Armee Fraktion than anything else, prior to her descent into terrorism Ulrike Meinhof was a journalist who wrote for and edited konkret. This popular and influential magazine on the emerging West German New Left gave her pause to reflect on the political economy of the press generally, and the position of the columnist. In her rasping, uncompromising style her 1968 article on 'Columnism' took on the MVPs of print media. She wrote,

The investor expects two things from columnists. They should develop their own personal reading public, preferably readers who would not buy the paper if they weren’t in it. That is the profit factor. Columnists who cannot achieve this will sooner or later lose their job. Then there’s the prestige factor. The columnist’s fenced-in but independent thinking gives the whole paper the aura of independent thinking. The columnist’s outrageousness gives the paper the aura of outrageousness. The columnist’s occasional and courageous expression of unpopular ideas gives the paper the aura of courage to express unpopular ideas.

She paints a picture of the occupational hierarchy. Those doing the grunt work of minor stories and regurgitated press releases quickly learn that "they can do this, and that, and they write even if they haven’t finished thinking; they write without having read the necessary books. Good journalists turn the topic into the object, and do what they want with this object." This is writing for the sake of space filling, of shoving in blocks of text so the page looks full. It cultivates an ability to turn one's hand to almost any story. It's a frustrating, deadline-missing experience for junior hacks but those who stick it out can become the star columnist where they bring this light-minded approach to opinion pushing. For Meinhof, columnists are an editor's "best lackey", and are grateful for their elevation to this more indolent position as long as they behave "as though it were possible to have an opinion on any topic in the world, expressed in a text that is always the same length."

This is a position jealously guarded, and helps explain the obsession with cancelling. She wrote, "The publisher assigns the columnist the role of leading the readers ... Columnists cannot give their space to their readers. If they knew someone who could do a better job, they cannot ask that person to write in their place. That would frustrate the readers, who have, after all, grown accustomed to the one. Columnism is a personality cult." By creating stars, as per the Hollywood system, readers will keep coming back to buy the product and advertising space on or opposite their page can be sold at a premium. Columnism is inseparable from market logics, "we want the columnists’ freedom to be recognised for what it is: a prestige and profit factor, a fraud for the readers, self-deception ...".

You can certainly see all these traits among our media friends of radioactive fallout. The glib manner the spectre of nuclear war is passed over, as if it was no more consequential than deciding what jumper to wear that day. Knowing their offhandedness is an invitation to outrage, it keeps a brand going, guaranteeing exposure - and bankability where the papers are concerned. This might help explain the cynicism and the performative stupidity of a Dan Hodges, for example, but politicians and internet randoms? What unites Defence Select Committee chair Tobias Ellwood, EU supergrifter Femi, and youthful Blairites ostentatiously (and farcically) matching Putin's bellicose hints with nuclear threats of their own?

In the age of the internet and social media, we are all prey to columnism. Followings are an imagined approximation of social standing, an at-a-glance metric of influence and reach. The coming of the attention economy incentivises a veritable incontinence of opinion spouting. No matter how outlandish, stupidly, or self-evidently cynical the take there are audiences who lap it up. And this rough form of social capital can be traded in for economic capital, ranging from Patreons and Buy Me a Coffees to merch to paid gigs to getting taken on as a columnist. The attention economy is now vitally important for politics as well, giving outsiders a chance to make inroads into the mainstream or raising one's profile if normally overlooked in favour of more senior figures. See Oliver Dowden's recent play, for example.

Anything and everything can be a stake in the culture wars the attention economy thrives off, almost as if they don't have real world consequences. We've seen this with Brexit, Covid and the vaccination effort, and now nuclear holocaust. They are signs obeying the logics of the economy of the signs, and what they denote and connote doesn't matter as long as attention is attracted. And if it's not, they're rapidly substituted for something else that might. Ulrike Meinhof died in 1976 in apparently mysterious circumstances, but there's nothing mysterious about how columnism has escaped the pages of the press and weaved itself into the social fabric.

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A Case Study in Decrepitude

In many ways, contemporary Russia is the culmination of trends present in Britain and the United States. Whereas a balance of constitutionalism, long-established (but strictly limited) democratic norms, and the combustible potential of civil society has dragged on the long-dominant programme of marketisation and privatisation, that hasn't happened in Russia. Since the end of the Soviet Union, the old economy has been sold off and looted by a fast emergent plutocracy. Institutions of state get by on a shoestring, and not even oil and gas money can shift the stubborn miasma of decay. If that wasn't bad enough, the authoritarian bent of our governments show a Russian-flavoured vision of a possible political future: an increasingly isolated and insulated autocrat cut off from the world, while the inefficiencies of their tyranny is content to leave what passes for civil society alone, as long as its movements don't mount direct political challenges against the creaking state. With economic power concentrated in few hands and political power held by even fewer, how much is this state of decomp responsible for the military debacle unfolding in Ukraine?

The poor performance of the Russian army has become the surprise consensus of Western war punditry, and while there's plenty of propaganda doing the rounds the use of social media triangulated with multiple reports paints a concerning picture - for the Kremlin. The viral footage of farmers towing away military hardware, of Russian soldiers complaining about being out of gas, and of armoured columns apparently shot up by Ukrainian drones. A Putin propaganda master stroke to lure his opponents and the West into a false sense of security about the quality of Russian arms, or what it immediately appears to be: an incredible display of ineptitude? Perhaps using up a load of fuel and provisions on manoeuvres in the freezing mud of Belarus in the weeks prior to the invasion wasn't the best of ideas.

As Ukraine has proved, no tragedy is without its moments of farce, but even if Putin's forces weren't experiencing the stubborn resistance we're seeing, from the conventional armed sort to human chains blocking convoys on Ukraine's highways to singing the national anthem at bemused Russian troops, that Putin would meet opposition was forecast by everyone with eyes and an internet connection. Putin, who was the world leader Nigel Farage previously most admired because of his acumen and feel for the international scene, grossly underestimated not just Ukraine but the diplomatic wall the West has quickly erected against him.

Hubris is one charge laid at Putin. As Ben Judah rightly points out, in recent years the top of the Russian state has undergone significant degeneration. From a mafia council to one boss ruling alone, Putin's closest lieutenants are his creatures bought by office holding and gas money. The oligarchy that supported the regime for so long are at arms length, literally distanced in the case of those domiciled in London or sailing the seven seas on their super yachts, or are either out of sorts or have fallen out with their former champion. Just like political parties in the West who erode as they become cut off from their planks of support and fall prey to their mythologies, it appears Putin has arrived at this destination through a simple process of social distancing, in the non-Covid sense, from his base. This does not mean that Putin lives inside an illusion pushing around imaginary battallions on a map, but it does mean it is distorted. And this helps explain his decision making.

On the Western powers, unfortunately there is a grain of truth in the oft-made warhawk claim about Syria. When Putin threw his support behind Bashar Al-Assad's regime the absence of effective action against the Syrian government precisely because Russia was now involved was obviously noted. The same was probably true of the Salisbury poisonings too. This summer the Anglo-American alliance abandoned Afghanistan to the Taliban and famine, having seemingly lost their resolve to defend their client government. And since 2003, Western publics have grown more wary of military entanglements. Add to this the shocks that have rippled through the body politic over the last decade - Brexit and its bad tempered negotiations, Trump, Corbynism, the collapse of the centre left in Europe, so-called culture wars, divisive referenda, and the fall out from Covid all, from the end of Putin's overlong table it looks like his traditional opponents are in a state of disarray. And then there are Russia's recent military adventures. The ghost of the first Chechen war was put to rest by the shock and awe brutality of the second. Then there was the short, sharp police action against Georgia which set up puppet regimes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and then the swift annexation of Crimea which was relatively hassle-free. The relatively low level war in Ukraine's eastern breakaway republics notwithstanding, this run of operational luck can inflate the perception of a military in the eyes of its commander-in-chief. Faced with an apparently divided West and a Ukraine that didn't put up much resistance to the bites Putin took out of it in 2014, living in splendid isolation with yes men spinning the military intelligence reports, we get some way along the road to understanding the conditions of Putin's thinking, and the grounds of his miscalculation.

What Putin got wrong was, obviously, Ukraine's resolve. With a better equipped and a larger army than eight years ago, plus a motivated population determined to push out an invader, it should have been obvious to everyone, especially someone historically as savvy as Putin, that the force assembled was not up to the task of subduing a large country. The second is his misreading of the West. While he was right NATO and the EU would not commit troops to fight in Ukraine, he miscalculated its appetite for sanctions, even if they caused the West some inconvenience. And he got this wrong because it directly confronted the common foreign policy interests of Europe and the United States. The West was and is divided over what to do in the Middle East, but not when it comes to containing Putin's revanchism on its eastern frontier. Putin is forcibly trying to remove an EU-NATO client state from the West's orbit for a Russia-friendly, dismembered buffer state. He is therefore confronting Western interests directly, and they will not countenance it. And given their collective economic and soft power clout, the other major world powers - India and China - are observing something of a Trappist silence with Xi, apparently, very displeased with Putin's adventure. They have used their influence to diplomatically isolate Russa like no big power has been since the Second World War. It didn't take genius insight to read where the tensions are and where there is unity among the Western alliance, but this is exactly what the Kremlin has failed to do.

The grey beards liked to talk about the materialism of historical processes, how social being conditions consciousness. To put it crudely, ideas don't drive history. Rather it is history that gives rise to thought. In Vladimir Putin, we see this play out like simple chemistry experiments in a laboratory. The decay of post-Soviet Russia was exacerbated by the class he championed and the state he contructed. The looting of his country's wealth and its disappearance into certain jurisdictions has left Russian infrastructure in a state of advanced disrepair, and the rot has spread throughout the political body, from the corruption of the state to the decrepitude of the military. This decomposition he and his cronies have overseen and profited from has boomeranged back, conditioning the thinking behind what is an egregious miscalculation. Putin has made a serious mistake that could cut short his time at the top, and one ensuring a river of blood lies between now and the consequences of his actions catching up with him.

Five Most Popular Posts in February

Here's what did the business on the blog this last month.

1. The Labour Right's Corbyn Obsession
2. Against Putin
3. Time for a Democratic Socialists of Britain?
4. The Class Politics of Levelling Up Failure
5. There's Nothing in the Briefcase

Was a major war on your bingo card for 2022? It wasn't on mine even at the beginning of the month. Before last Thursday, it was politics business as usual where this place was concerned. The same old obsessions of the Labour right topped the monthly chart. Even if the Labour Party lasts another 50 years you'll still have rightwingers in the 2070s carping on about the evils of Corbynism. And even earlier in the month, my musings about whether a network of leftists along the lines of the DSA, the tensions within the Tory voter coalition that make the government's levelling up promises extremely unlikely, and the emptiness of Labour Party politics in the pre-pre-period of the local elections were entirely unsettled by the build up on the borders of Ukraine. The sudden about turn in the situation ensured my piece on the invasion powered its way up to the second spot.

Given what's happening, there's only one real choice for the customary second chance piece, and that would be this on how the Labour right are sacralising NATO as a means of not just marginalising the left in Labour, but redrawing the boundaries of what passes for legitimate debate in mainstream politics.

Who knows what next month will bring except for more bloodshed and destruction, events that will find their echo on this here blog. But there are some "normal" things to look forward to, such as the Erdington by-election result this Thursday and all the usual ins and outs of politics.

As you're reading this chances are you're a hardcore follower of this blog. You'll also know I've hopped aboard the Patreon bandwagon. So if you like what I do and you have a few quid to spare, please consider supporting my work.

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Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste

The first casualty of war, they say, is the truth. Anyone trying to follow Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine knows exactly what this is about. Past footage of actions in the east of the country are posted up and badged as recent fighting. A scene from a video game has purported to be a Ukrainian jet fighter in action. And then there are all sorts of claims about casualty figures, where Russian troops are, and the whereabouts of Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. It's a complete mess, but what we should expect from the fog of war.

There are others taking advantage of the situation too. As the crisis broke on Thursday, the Labour leadership found time amid a hot war to issue threats against Labour MPs who signed Stop the War's latest statement. Pull the signatures or we pull the whip, said the party's leadership. The 11 names were duly dropped. The letter focuses its criticism on Britain and the bellicose role the Tories played in the lead up to Thursday's invasion. On the question of Ukraine's right to defend itself, let alone whether it deserves solidarity in the face of Putin's aggression, nothing is said. By focusing its critique on Britain, they say "In taking this position we do not endorse the nature or conduct of either the Russian or Ukrainian regimes." A weak statement then whose advice leaves those who take their cue from it rudderless on the central question of the conflict, in my opinion. But even this was too much for Labour's new management, who are ostentatious about their pro-NATO enthusiasm than the Tories.

On Sunday morning, the Labour right stepped up its war on the left with the comments made by Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Times Radio. He accused Jeremy Corbyn of "effectively parroting the lines that are coming from Vladimir Putin that suggest that this is because of threats from NATO, or NATO expansion." Yes, because "no to war in Ukraine" is the slogan emblazoned across every Russian tank as it heads into battle. Another example of using Corbyn to put what they think is electorally favourable distance between the party of its leftwing interlude and now? Yes, and they don't care if it, by insinuation, portrays people they share the green benches with as "traitors". It's not as if two MPs have been murdered in recent years or anything.

But there's also more to it than the usual rank manoeuvring. It's done with an eye to recasting politics. Starmerism, as much as it is a thing, isn't "Toryism" in a red rosette nor, for that matter, a rebranded Blairism. It is an authoritarian project that treats the party like a managed democracy. It has no time for members who expect to be more than leafleting and canvassing fodder because, in the best traditions of Fabianism, the big brains at the top have all the answers. They will make people's lives better by spending a bit more money here, a technocratic fix there, and getting on with the complicated business of government while everyone else carries on with their lives. For it to succeed, this project requires two things. A restitution of trust in state institutions. And new enclosures around what is "permitted" political debate. That is shutting down the spaces the Corbyn moment opened up and squeezing it into a circumscribed range of views. By shrinking the mainstream and forcing it down prescribed channels, Starmerism is working to restructure politics more broadly in a reverent direction. It's not about Blair-style cults of the personality, but ultimately closing off future avenues of dissent that will be politically costly to deal with. It's a politics of preparing ground for having faith in the leader and the state, and one that will allow him to govern as he sees fit.

Whether Russia achieves its objectives or Ukraine exacts a heavy price from Putin's forces, politicians away from the theatre of conflict are determined to have a good war. Keir Starmer is one of them.

Local Council By-Elections February 2022

This month saw 40,767 votes cast over 25 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. Overall, 10 council seats changed hands. For comparison with January's results, see here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/-  Jan	+/- Feb 20	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	25	14,778	36.2%	-2.4	-2.3	591	0
Labour	22	8,216	20.2%	-10.8	-9.8	374	+2
LibDem	18	10,494	25.7%	+14.7	+10.2	583	+3
Green	13	3,006	7.4%	+0.4	+4.9	231	0
SNP*	0						0
PC**	0						0
Ind***	8	3,963	9.7%	+5.4	-2.9	495	-5
Other****	7	310	0.8%	+0.8	+0.7	44	0

* There were no by-elections in Scotland
** There were no by-elections in Wales
*** There was one Independent clash this month
**** Others in February consisted of For Britain (45), Freedom Alliance (28), Reform UK (64), SDP (12), TUSC (70, 22, 69)

After the excitement of December's elections, which saw the worst Tory performance in years, it looks like stabilisation is in the electoral air. Their vote has consolidated and national scandal, it seems, has not percolated downwards to the local scene. The Tories dropped seats to the Liberal Democrats and Labour, but balanced things out by taking one back from the yellow party and the Indies - who didn't have a good month at all.

Things didn't look good for Labour either, if you look only at the vote tally. Trailing third behind the LibDems is never a positive sign, but one must be fair in these situations. These seats were not good ground for Labour, and so those who care about such things must be chuffed it netted two seats in unfavourable circumstances. And the LibDems' winning ways are pretty standard now, which must be encouraging for that party's nerds as well. Also worthwhile noting is Thurston in Mid-Suffolk, which was a Green hold.

There are 19 seats up in March and, like this month, they don't look like particularly fertile grounds for Labour growth. But we'll see what the ballots deliver up.

3rd February
Cotswold, Campden and Vale, Con hold
Dacorum, Berkhamsted West, LDem hold
Dacorum, Boxmoor, LDem hold
Leicester, Evington, Lab hold
Manchester, Ancoats and Beswick, LDem gain from Lab
Tamworth, Spital, Con hold

10th February
Eastleigh, Eastleigh Central, LDem hold
Somerset West and Taunton, Alcombe, LDem gain from Ind
Wealden, Hailsham South, LDem gain from Con

17th February
Allerdale, Stainburn and Clifton, Lab gain from Ind
Bristol, Southmead, Lab hold
Mid Suffolk, Thurston, Grn hold
Newark and Sherwood, Collingham, Con gain from Ind
North East Lincolnshire, Park, Con hold
Nottinghamshire, Collingham, Ind hold
North Northamptonshire, Oundle, LDem gain from Con
Oadby and Wigston, Wigston Meadowcourt, Con gain from LDem
West Devon, Tavistock North, Con gain from Ind

23rd February
Spelthorne, Stanwell North, Lab gain from Con

24th February
Castle Point, St Peter's, Con hold
Durham, Ferryhill, Lab gain from Ind
Lincolnshire, Colsterworth Rural, Con hold
Maldon, Wickham Bishops and Woodham, Con hold
South Kesteven, Aveland, Con hold
South Kesteven, Isaac Newton, Con hold

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Against Putin

I was wrong. Given the size of the military forces Russia had in the field versus the larger Ukrainian army plus irregulars and reserves, I didn't think Vladimir Putin would prove stupid enough to launch an invasion of Ukraine. He has calculated the lack of enthusiasm for war in the West, divisions among the Western powers, and the armed forces of Ukraine themselves aren't much of a deterrent, and so here we are. As of 5am local time Thursday morning a barrage of missiles, air strikes, and cross border shelling were followed by armoured incursions and helicopter drops. Putin has brought large scale war to Europe for the first time since 1945.

Following the government's previous tepid response, in the Commons this afternoon Boris Johnson announced a further round of sanctions that will exclude big Russian firms from the City. No word on sunk assets yet, which are still too close to the Tory bone. On this specific issue it was difficult to disagree with Keir Starmer when he said "For too long our country has been a safe haven for money Putin and his fellow bandits stole from the Russian people", echoing but not acknowledging words made by his predecessor during a less serious crisis four years previously. Johnson also announced that a similar sanctions regime is also now in force against Belarus, who has allowed its soil to be used as a firing post against targets in Ukraine. Presumably it's Lukashenko's payback for Putin's valued support during the uprising 18 months ago.

The violence unfolding on our screens is an open and shut case of big power bullying. Not content with lopping bits off Ukraine eight years ago, Russia is back for another bite. Putin has simultaneously described the country as an invention of Lenin and a nest of Nazi vipers, while his useful idiots - knowing or otherwise - wax lyrically about the self-determination of the peoples of the east, namely the Donetsk and Luhansk "peoples" republics. Putin cries foul over NATO's expansion, citing a non-existent agreement not to take on former Warsaw Pact nations and soviet republics as members at the end of the Cold War. But all of this is complete flim-flam. It is a straightforward case of land grabbing to stabilise the region under the hegemony of Europe's largest military power. Something that should be straightforward if we borrow the thinking of a certain Ukrainian Marxist well known to the British left: in the conflict between an imperialist power and a country it's trying to take into vassalage, the left have a duty to oppose that imperial power. Whether Putin aims to occupy Ukraine in its entirety, sling out its government and replace it with friendly faces, or carve out more territory for his puppet republics is immaterial: none are justifiable, all should be opposed.

"But", says those for whom Russia will never cease being the USSR, "the West have pushed Putin into it. They've expanded NATO and supported the so-called Orange revolution that overthrew a democratically elected president and replaced him with another congenial to their interests." And? Wasn't the whole point about the schism on the European left over a hundred years ago that inter-imperialist tensions and conflicts weren't a matter for taking sides, except our own? The encroachment of NATO to Russia's frontiers were a matter for the left in member countries to oppose the alliance and its expansion, but that does not mean governments joined NATO because fears of Russian revanchism were fake. And it certainly doesn't mean there is an "anti-imperialist duty" to side with Putin and provide his machinations left cover. The alternative to NATO membership in the east is the acceptance of Russian hegemony, neither of which carries forward the socialist struggle.

No doubt some small sections of the left will be favouring "military support" for Russia, imagining they have their own equipment and personnel they can parachute into the breakaway republics to strike a hammer blow against "imperialism" - or at least sell a few papers to the front line troops. But meanwhile, in real world politics the labour movement in this country finds itself confronted with a set of practical tasks. Building solidarity with the Ukrainian and Russian labour and civil society movements, mobilising the largest numbers possible against war - with this Saturday's demonstration a start, and opposing our own war hawks while continually worrying the Tory party over its Moscow Gold - and what influence this cash bought those who splashed it out. We have to be modest about our ability to direct the course of events, but these are good places to begin.

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The Birmingham Trojan Horse Scandal

Another evening, another break from writing I'm sorry to say. But there's always plenty of good stuff worth viewing. Such as this Novara piece on the Islamist Trojan Horse "plot" in Birmingham's schools, how a pair of New York Times journalists did some proper journalism and uncovered the fakery, and how The Observer's Sonia Sodha has provided liberal cover for the press and the politicians who lapped it up. A reminder, as if we needed one, about how we must build the depth and reach of our own media.

Appeasing the Oligarchs

It's curious.

Last week, Boris Johnson talked tough about the Ukraine crisis and threatened all kinds of serious consequences short of military action. The Prime Minister was even happy enough to let Defence Secretary Ben Wallace muse out loud about "Munich" and the "appeasement" efforts of his NATO counterparts. And then in a rambling, chauvinistic, and purposely wrong speech on the history of Ukraine on Monday night, Vladimir Putin announced Russia would be recognising the two breakaway republics and pledged them military assistance.

In reply German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has suspended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, to some considerable cost and inconvenience to his country. At the behest of the Germans and the French, the European Union have announced sanctions on members of the Russian Duma, 27 named individuals, and restricted access to EU capital markets.

And non-nonsense plain-speaking Britain? Travel bans issued to three oligarchs already sanctioned by Washington, and the freezing of the assets of five minor banks. And that's it. For all the chest beating, Boris Johnson's government have not matched their walk with their talk. The "appeasers" have made their stand, while the Prime Minister opposes Putin with nothing more than a token gesture and a pledge he'll mean it next time.

Attention has been drawn to how compromised the Tory party is by oligarchs' money. When someone else spoke about this four years ago, it was the cue for Labour back benchers to pick up where they left off with their factional war. Considering the influence Putin's cronies have over the Tories via the party's coffers were out of bounds. But now, everybody is doing it. Perhaps even Keir Starmer will go as far to raise it at Prime Minister's Questions. While the penetration of these funds, the details of interests lobbied for and favours granted should be revealed, the Tory enthusiasm for Russian money in more than individual corruption and wrongdoing. It goes to the heart of the party's coalition, its institutional articulation of class interests.

Underneath the mass support, and the particular coalitions of capital supportive of the Tories at any moment, the party owes undying fealty to the City of London. The City is not a singular entity that controls the party, but it does have common interests. These are its continuation as the number one global destination of money seeking quick returns or looking to raise further finance, and all the firms and their individual players have clear interests in ever increasing volumes of trades from which brokerage and handling fees can be extracted. This commercial capital, often misread as finance, is the dominant fraction of British capital. Its personnel constantly circulate from city firms to the Bank of England to the Treasury, and with not a few of them washing up on the Tory benches. Their party, and to a lesser extent Labour, have historically been committed to its pre-eminence. For the Tories, it's the lynchpin of their class power. For others who tell themselves technocratic fairy tales to avoid confronting the class-bound character of the system they manage, it's the goose that lays the golden egg. The health of the City is good for the country because it keeps the taxes coming in, and grants the UK great power status. The rest of these islands can go to the dogs as long as the City remains.

As the premiere clearing house for money, untold billions of looted Russian assets have passed through the City. Some of it went directly into London's overheated property market, others have engaged the services of brokers and hedge fund managers, and some has bought directly into these firms themselves. The panic of the 2008 crash was driven by not knowing the difference between good and bad debt thanks to the investment vehicles cobbled together from mortgages and other obligations. Oligarch capital has spent 30 years sloshing around the City. Finding where it all is, who owns it, and how much of it is essential for the operation of the City is deeply compromising and would expose the corruption at the heart of the "rule of law" in this country. Tough measures against Russian capital also means tough measures against the City, in other words. There is no way Johnson is going to voluntarily sanction the Putin regime and its hangers on. He will have to be dragged into it by his American and European allies - as this round of tentative "sanctions" show.

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Wishing Covid Away

On Sunday evening, the Prime Minister said "Covid will not suddenly disappear, and we need to learn to live with this virus and continue to protect ourselves without restricting our freedoms." A preface to a sensible plan for coping with the disease as we head into the Spring months? Not in the slightest. This Thursday, all legal measures for mitigating spread and supporting people while infected with Covid will cease. And from 1st April, appropriately enough, free testing for the public is going to end. Boris Johnson said now was the time to move away from restrictions and rely on personal responsibility, a position the Tories have been manoeuvring for since the beginning of the outbreak.

I know some people think it's boring to bang on about Covid, but that might reveal something about their position to insulate themselves from or cope with infection. But for others, it's terrifying. The immune-compromised and clinically vulnerable, of which there are half a million of the former and 3.7 million of the latter, are not considered by Johnson at all - except for a promise to roll out a fourth shot for them and the over-75s. While the added protection this affords is welcome, vaccines can only go so far minimising risks for the clinically vulnerable. One cannot dive into a mosh pit at a Covid party and expect to emerge uninfected or with an inconvenient case of the sniffles: vaccinated people succumb to the virus every day, and others are left to cope with sometimes debilitating long-term effects. There is also no thought given to the mental health of millions who imbibed an entirely reasonable fear of infection, and are anxious about the enforced return to normal when collective efforts at mitigating spread are actively undermined by the government.

The Tories scrapping of the self-isolation payment and the end to its legal status has been trailed for a while. "Self-responsibility" here means employers forcing people into work where they risk damaging the health of the infected employee and passing Covid on to other staff, some of whom might be vulnerable or, for whatever reason, haven't taken up a vaccine. This was estimated to stand at around 6.4 million people in December. Naturally, those without second jabs or boosters to their name are higher. And even if someone has an employer who respects positive tests, they cost. The hundred quid they were originally floated at appears to have gone away, but making them available to purchase at pharmacies means the low paid, again, are going to find themselves priced out of taking care of themselves. Self-responsibility, but only if you can afford it.

The class politics of the moment could not be more stark. The state is withdrawing all support to prevent people from "getting ideas", an approach the Tories have extended to energy bill relief. The removal of Covid isolation pay, in the words of the GMB, "will keep people with Covid at work ... It will prolong the pandemic with more outbreaks." It's so obvious that simply pointing out how these two measures strengthen the hand of the boss class is to insult the intelligence of the reader. And the people most vulnerable to infection? Our people. Our class is most likely to suffer poor health, are unable to isolate or take time to recover, or even be vaccinated, and they deserve the support, sympathy, and solidarity of the rest of us. They certainly don't need a Tory government's talk of "restoring liberties" as their cabal tightens the screws on trade unions, clamps down on the right to protest, and works to muzzle the elections watchdog.

The Prime Minister can say he takes Covid seriously, and the Devil can cite scripture for his own purposes. Johnson's actions betray his intentions. He could not care less for the suffering his government has caused, the people maimed and the people who are dead, or for the misery with which millions are contemplating the immediate future. And for what? So employers can keep an eye on their workers? So commercial rents start flowing again? So the Treasury's deficit hawks can colour code some lines on a spreadsheet green? And that his appalling backbenchers are placated? We are in a damnable situation with those in charge caring for everything but mitigating the mass casualty event we continue to live through.

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