At The Precipice – about fear, not writing

I am posting this across all my platforms. It has nothing to do with writing, and everything to do with fear.

I’m not a political analyst, but we’re now at a point where even the least political of people must be able to see that those at the centre and at the left of centre of politics around the world have committed, and are committing, a succession of what, for the want of a better word, can only be described as schoolboy errors. And, obvious, too, that although some of these errors have been unforced, like a bad tennis forehand, some of them have been forced by the Right’s evidently much more meticulous and rigorous and manipulative planning. And we have to accept the fact that the Far Right and the Far Left are essentially the same beast, with beast being the operative word.

First, globally – the West has been totally taken by complacent surprise by Trump’s immediate rapprochement with Putin (and we still have to question whether or not the former is effectively a Russian asset through greed or blackmail), and by Trump’s willingness and determination to proceed unconstitutionally and unlawfully. And neutral or tolerant countries are not being strong enough in kicking back against Trump – appeasement has never worked, and won’t work now, and won’t ever work. The only question is whether or not Trump would make war on former NATO allies.

Second – Europe, and the European Union in specific. Successive EU legislatures and elected administrators have for too long shied away from the idea of a European army, in effect a European deterrent against aggression from the USA or Russia. The sad reality is that this is directly as a result of the Right’s playbook to claim that any such army would be destructive of the sovereignty of any member country, whereas, actually, the Right is agitating and has always agitated against individual countries’ sovereignty. Any mention of that word should raise alarm bells in anyone, because it’s a war-monger’s concept. The EU, in common with the world at large, has underestimated the ability of the Right to manipulate and manage most media and the thoughts of most undereducated people (deliberately undereducated, by the way, by successive right-wing governments) so that they don’t question processes, policies, and actions which undermine global and European democracies. Someone once said that Europe will always be the main theatre of war, because it is the best place geographically for neither Russia nor the USA to be directly affected. The first nuclear bomb will land in the middle of Western Europe.

Finally, what grieves me most, the UK. In July last year, we all rejoiced when almost 15 years of Tory rule ended. There were hints, though, even then, that the Right was again on the rise, and those of us who cared, had warned of this a long long time ago. The problem we have now is that the Labour government which we all hoped for has committed a succession of simple but critical errors which have weakened, and continue to weaken, not just the UK but the EU, too. The principal problem in approach is that Labour expected or assumed that the right-wing media would give them a break, would stop being biased against them, wouldn’t continue to harass, would stop digging, would stop lying. That’s not happened, and it never was going to happen. And the focus of this media on rich farmers’ protests about having to start paying inheritance tax is an obvious example of this.

Labour’s main error politically has been that it has again and again ruled out rejoining the EU when rejoining would actually have significant and linked benefits – the UK economy would start growing effectively again; the cost-of-living crisis would be mitigated; the EU would be stronger against the twin threats of the US and Russia (economically and militarily and ideologically); the positive impacts would much more quickly become tangible and people would stop feeling so miserable. Furthermore, instead of driving towards such a goal (when a vast majority of people in the UK now favour a realignment with the EU), Labour is adopting chapters from the Right’s playbook (viz the statement that people legally granted asylum in the UK will never be able to be UK citizens, viz the posters in Reform UK colours, viz the films of refugees being detained and put on deportation flights).

Frankly, it’s disgusting and abhorrent that the Labour government is making anti-immigrant rhetoric the main plank of its current policies, that it’s not adopting the language of inclusion, tolerance and welcome for people fleeing wars which have been caused by the West (and by British imperialism) in the first place.

What Labour have overlooked is that this very approach will cause an even greater splintering of the anti-Right vote come the next election. Many of us only leant Labour our votes instead of voting Green or Liberal Democrat because we hoped that Labour would be able to understand what was needed in the UK. Caring, impactful, and thoughtful politics. Not the appeasement of the Right, not the assumption that rich companies would absorb the increase in employers’ national insurance contributions (they were never going to), not the bending over backwards to please the racists when a programme of educating people in the rich benefits of multiculturalism would be much more effective and better for the economic and cultural wealth of the UK.

We stand at the precipice, and unless the EU and the UK can actually agree on an effective course of action to counter the feudal approach of Trump and Putin, and implement it, the world will lie in ruins within the next 12 months.