I am taking the plunge into Your Party. My worries remain about its centralist tendencies and lack of democracy, but I will work against those from within.
Your Party is not a unionist party. It does not yet have a policy on Scottish Independence. I shall of course be striving for it actively to support Scottish Independence. I feel fairly confident that this will succeed.
The Left in Scotland is overwhelmingly pro-Independence, just as the Right is overwhelmingly anti-Independence. There do exist Scottish unionist socialists, but they are a small and shrinking minority. It may turn out they are disproportionately represented in Your Party, but I do not believe that is likely to be the case.
More to the point, for years opinion polls have shown that at least a third of Scottish Labour voters support Independence. There is now a major and consistent gap in opinion polls between support for Independence – averaging around 52% – and support for the SNP – averaging around 31%. 21% of Scottish voters support Independence but will not vote for the SNP. That is a significant source of potential support for a viable alternative pro-Independence Party.
It is worth recalling that ten years ago support for the SNP and support for Independence were very tightly correlated. That is now absolutely not the case, for the simple reason the SNP pays no more than lip service to Independence.
A Corbyn-linked, pro-Independence Party in Scotland would have the capacity to destroy the Scottish branch of the Labour Party – which is already in deep trouble and polling around 15%.
There have been a number of attempts to provide a home for the Independence voters disillusioned with the SNP. The Scottish Greens currently show good polling figures, but they are a rather strange party, entirely separate from the English Greens, and far more interested in gender issues than in anything else.
I was a member of the Alba Party until the leadership made very plain I was unwanted, for reasons that don’t seem any more profound than their personal ambitions. While led by Alex Salmond, Alba was the obvious vehicle for Independence support, but since his demise it has torn itself apart. There are others – including the Independence for Scotland Party and Liberate Scotland – which contain some great people, but are currently very small.
Your Party can become a vehicle for a socialism that, as part of its universal commitment to anti-Imperialism, supports Independence for Scotland and Wales and supports the reunification of Ireland. I see that as a transformative position in British politics and a truly radical response to the need for fundamental change in the British state.
I might add that I have never heard Jeremy Corbyn express any personal opposition to Scottish Independence. He supports self-determination and anti-Imperialism around the globe and supports Irish reunification. I think those who note he did not support Scottish Independence whilst leader of the Labour Party are being obtuse. It was not the position of his party. He now has a different party, and I am very confident he would follow the party position.
The rather shadowy leadership cadre of Your Party is anxious to fudge the issue by adopting a policy of “the right of the Scottish people to decide”. This is basically to say that they support a second independence referendum. That is slightly useful, but it is a peculiar abnegation of responsibility – and very easy to say in the knowledge Westminster will not agree.
Of course the Scottish people have the right to decide. That must be the starting point for any socialist party. But that is not a policy. You might as well state that the people have the right to decide whether utilities should be renationalised. Of course they do. But our policy is to renationalise utilities.
A party that just says “we believe in the will of the people – whatever that may be. We don’t actually have an opinion” is not much of a political party.
Which leads me on to the question which I think is driving Your Party’s lack of discernible structured democracy and voting process so far: Israel.
The leadership seem desperate to avoid a commitment to a single state of Palestine, from the river to the sea. The reason for this is that Jeremy is still surrounded by the same group of “soft” zionists who wrecked his leadership of the Labour Party, by continually attempting to placate the zionist lobby through apology after apology. They committed expulsion after expulsion of lifelong antiracists and socialists.
The preferred formula of proponents within Your Party of the Bantustan two-state solution is: “Let the Palestinian people decide”. Often accompanied by the plausible-sounding “it is not for us to decide for the Palestinian people”.
The problem is of course the Palestinian people have a gun to their head. Literally. They have no free will to decide anything. And of which Palestinian people are you going to take the word? Universally reviled Abbas and the Palestinian Authority? Some US-installed puppet administration under the Gaza fake Peace Plan?
No. The only solution any socialist should support is a Palestine free, from the river to the sea. Then it should indeed be for the Palestinian people to decide. Within the free, secular, democratic state of Palestine for which we should strive – and which now has more support from the people of the world than ever. If the free people of Palestine voluntarily then decide to give some land for a Jewish ethno-state, so be it.
Finally, it seems to me that Your Party needs to support massive socio-economic change.
Late-stage capitalism has resulted in inequalities of wealth which are simply staggering. These are not the natural order of things. They are a result of deliberate, state-imposed structures, including the creation of currency within the banking system, the state paying banks interest on currency of which the state itself licensed the creation, taxation structures where the burden of payment falls upon the poor, enterprise ownership structures that promote wealth accumulation, and a housing market tending to ever-greater concentration of capital and the permanent subservience of working people to a landlord class.
The economic changes required are profound. The Greens have adopted one idea I have consistently promoted: limits on CEO pay and benefits relative to the workforce. They have I think suggested 10 x the average salary in the enterprise, whereas I suggested 8 x the lowest salary in the enterprise, but it is the same policy.
Rather to my amazement there was a really good editorial in the Observer yesterday suggesting some policies that directly start to tackle a number of the problems I have outlined, not least the state borrowing its own currency from the banks.
I used to favour a modified capitalism where share ownership lay largely with workers, but as states have evolved into far more complex financial systems where huge volumes of financial transactions do not relate to the purchase of goods and services, that approach is now only a small part of the answer, and the role of the state needs to increase. I am not sure I have quite finished reconciling this with my libertarian instincts, nor yet fully integrated those parts of modern monetary theory which are self-evidently true. But I am working on it.
To return to Your Party, I profoundly distrust the “Assemble” model of meetings split up into little groups. These avoid votes or any genuine effort to actually determine the will of the meeting. Instead they give the power of divining the “consensus” to unseen central figures. I have been told this system combats patriarchalism. That is obvious nonsense – I am pretty sure you will find patriarchs behind the curtains, dictating what was “decided” by the touchy-feely groups. And if they are matriarchs, that would be no better.
The national Conference is to be on the basis of sortition. The key question is this: Who gets to be there without going through the sortition process? How many and who are they? That seems to me essential to know. I have already seen direct evidence that a very large number of the little political groups who are dictating matters behind the scenes will avoid sortition by being present as “stewards”. As though stewards could not have been forthcoming from among those selected by sortition.
There are also officially going to be “VIPs” not subject to sortition. Who chooses them? Will a list be published?
The sortition itself, according to the documents circulated to members, will be fixed to make sure groups are fairly represented. What sort of groups? Ethnic? Gender? Political? This undermines the entire basis of sortition itself.
I have the deepest possible reservations about the manipulation of “democracy” within Your Party. But there are bound to be teething troubles at the start, and while there is plainly a huge amount of plotting for control, I don’t see anything we the members – and I am now one – cannot sweep aside as we get the party going.
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The choice of name- Your Party- is deeply revealing. Not even Our Party. Your Party. The leadership addresses potential members as “you” rather than “we”. This isn’t a party, it’s a marketing strategy- a brand. Corbyn and his remaining friends will siphon off some of the energy needed to oppose late capitalism and run a few election campaigns before quietly folding. And the UK will be in a worse place than when this endeavour started.
The name has to be something along the lines of “No f*cking zionists whatsoever”, otherwise it’s doomed.
Is that a serious comment or were you trying to be funny? If the former, it seems to be a good example of a specific obsession overcoming a generally good development.
Looking at the English political, economic and social scene, I would gently suggest that Your Party will have quite a few more urgent and meaningful (to the people of England) matters to get its teeth into?
The name “Your Party” even as a holding name is idiotic and patronising, and it’s remarkable that nobody realised this. But since he first became an MP in 1983 Jeremy Corbyn has been arsehole-clenchingly committed to the parliamentary road. I doubt even if the anti-terrorist police frogmarch him out of his house and attach electrodes to his knackers he’ll ever see the light. (Nobody should bother trying to construct a counter-argument based on Northern Ireland BTW.)
Forgive the harshness if you’re reading this, Jeremy. I respect that you have principles.
Incidentally “Your Party” is in keeping with Jeremy Corbyn’s idea of a “people’s prime minister’s question time” in the hallowed Commons chamber, with which IIRC David Cameron was happy to play ball.
Of course it’s better to stop fascism by voting than to fight a war against it, but we’re already long past that as an option.
If a) there is a next election, b) I am in Britain, c) I am still alive, and d) Your Party puts up a candidate where I’m registered, I will probably vote for him or her. But seriously they will be skating on thin ice where I’m concerned if they promise to create 1 million climate change jobs and mention transsexuals about a dozen times, as the Labour manifesto did when Corbyn was leader.
Bearing in mind the Workers’ Party’s promise of blockchain for the working class, they could possibly get even more batshit than that, but let’s hope they don’t.
Just nobody mention Orkney or Shetland independence, okay?
“This isn’t a party, it’s a marketing strategy- a brand.”
A brand that is horribly reminiscent of Microsoft and its use of the first person possessive pronoun.
I’m glad to hear that you have made the plunge into Your Party. I share your concerns about the initial democratic deficits on display but hopefully once branches are established the members can begin the task of creating the promised ‘member-led’ party. And then I’m sure we will quickly see support for a free Palestine and independent Scotland turned into policy, as well as opposition to NATO membership and nuclear weapons. Things have moved in since Corbyn’s leadership of Labour but some are still suffering from the effects of prolonged Labour membership – which clearly still lies like a nightmare over the minds of the living.
If you limit the CEO pay they’ll compensate with the stock options. But this is small stuff. The big question is, can any “alternative” party survive in a modern Western democracy? The deep state will react, so the leadership will be either bought or set up and destroyed, as I am sure you are aware of.
Or maybe this whole idea is a mouse trap?
“If you limit the CEO pay they’ll compensate with the stock options.”
If you limit CEO pay, the workers are not going to be paid more, the money saved will simply be given out as dividends, or paid to other senior managers. The whole idea is bonkers, purely the politics of envy, and shows the usual socialist edging towards total state control of everything, which worked so well in the Soviet Union.
That’s the usual propaganda from the billionaire class.
Of course it’s nonsense, successful at fooling people only because all MSM sing the same song, and because fat-cat ‘donors’ to Party funds insist that no senior politician challenges it. Nobody ‘donates’ a million pounds to a political party getting something for it.
A little imagination applied to these problem suggests …
1. There’s a standard formula for valuing stock options; any limit on CEO compensation must apply to total compensation (salary,’bonuses’, stock options).
2. A limit could be expressed as a multiple of the median salary of employees, providing an incentive to pay workers properly (for purposes of the calculation, the full-time equivalent of part-time and casual wages would be used).
3. Mention of dividends is a complete red herring. People who invest money in a company expect more of a return on their investment than they could get from 100% safe government bonds. That’s either dividends, or (for a growing company) expectation of future dividends. The level of this return, relative to the risk profile of the company, is whatever it has to be to get investors to risk their money.
Don’t bother nitpicking with further objections. There are many – and for every one, a minute’s thought suggests a solution.
Bayard is completely right on this, Townsman. If companies are no longer allowed to pay millions to their CEOs (and presumably to the rest of their boards), whether in wages or stock options, they will make millions more in profits (assuming the same level of managerial competence: peanuts, monkeys etc). After corporation tax (which is a lot less than additional-rate income tax on wages), the companies can these distribute these to their shareholders via dividends. At present, around half of the UK stockmarket is owned by the top 1% wealthiest households in Britain and the US, some of which are a lot richer than any British-based CEO. The policy is economically illiterate nonsense.
Ironically, the people who are being cheated by excessive senior management pay are the shareholders, the owners of the company, but I doubt the thrust of this legislation is to right that wrong and to make sure that already rich people get their fair share of the profits. If a law limiting senior management pay is brought in, I expect that the only result would be that senior managers are paid less, not the bulk of workers paid more. The only incentive would be for yet more of our best workers (management are also workers) to work abroad to earn more money than what they could earn in the UK.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. If shareholders wish the CEOs of the companies they own to only be paid 8 or 10 times the average employee’s wage, they can propose motions to that effect at the companies’ AGMs and then vote accordingly. No need for political parties to get involved. On a related note, I see that Nvidia is now worth a staggering $4.7 trillion, more than the GDPs of any country apart from the US, China & Germany. I’m guessing that its shareholders don’t begrudge CEO Jensen Huang his massive pay packet.
Point 3 shows a complete ignorance of how the stockmarket works. Most people invest in shares for capital growth – you buy the shares, their value goes up, you sell them, that’s your return. Dividends are never a certain return on investment. Just because a company makes money one year is no guarantee it will the following year. If you want a fixed return, you buy, as you say, government or other interest-bearing bonds. A huge proportion of shares are held by pension companies who reinvest any dividends in buying more shares, not paying them out.
In any case, this is a non-problem and only illustrates that some left-wingers are still thinking that UK commerce hasn’t changed in the last hundred years and most companies are huge concerns with thousands of workers and a top-hatted boss sitting in his office high above the toiling masses on the shop floor. In reality, where such concerns still exist, they are mostly multinationals and therefore couldn’t give a hoot about UK laws like this one: you UK CEO has to accept a miserable salary? fine, just make up the difference in the US, to be paid when they are transferred to another branch of the company outside the UK. They are also the exception, rather than the rule. Most companies in the UK are run by their owners and employ less than a hundred people. It’s pure gesture politics.
Either you didn’t read the whole of point 3, or you’re the one showing “a complete ignorance” of how valuation works. The valuation of a company is the net present value of future dividends (added to – roughly speaking – its net assets). If a company can increase net present value of future dividends by investing profits rather than by paying dividends, it will do so. If you don’t know how to calculate the net present value of expected future cashflows, you’re not qualified to be taking part in this conversation.
Sure, the “net present value” is what you say it is, but that is not what most people mean when they talk about what a company is “worth” as in “Nvidia is now worth a staggering $4.7 trillion” in the comment above. What they mean is its market capitalisation, which is something completely different.
“Don’t bother nitpicking with further objections. There are many – and for every one, a minute’s thought suggests a solution.”
Unfortunately, a minute’s thought also suggests ways round this legislation.
Richard J Murphy did a fairly recent podcast video on limiting CEO pay, part of which dealt with stock options, dividends and so on. Can be seen here Is a maximum pay cap the answer to inequality in the UK? He has a lot of good videos on his YouTube Channel and he puts new ones out very regularly.
Good luck with ‘Your Party’ Craig. I’m in total agreement that we need a solid member-led Socialist party to vote for.
It is not the matter of “envy” and has nothing to do with the Soviet Union (where btw this particular part worked well indeed). 1st, the gap between CEO and average worker compensations keeps growing and contributes to rising inequality, which sooner or later will lead to social unrest. 2nd, high CEO compensations, especially, in the form of stock options and “golden parachutes” result in decline of companies performance.
“Modern Western democracy” = traditional oligarchy.
Well, I use this term in a strictly geographical sense :))
You say “Your Party is not a unionist party. It does not yet have a policy on Scottish Independence. I shall of course be striving for it actively to support Scottish Independence. I feel fairly confident that this will succeed.” I don’t have a problem with you being a member of a unionist party who I might ad its leader used to be the leader of another unionist Labour party which brought about the Scotland act and the branch office we now know as Holyrood. I’m just wonder why you didn’t seek clarification from Your Party on Scottish Independence before you joined.
Mr Murray any party who want to govern England and these other nations is a unionist party that’s just a fact and to ask our colonizers for us to have the right to choose well that speaks volumes about you being our Ambassador for Scotland at the UN. I’ve got a funny feeling you’ll want to be a candidate for Your Party next year Holyrood elections.
Jeremy Corbyn could have made his position clear on the Scottish constitutional question when he was leader of the Labour party and he didn’t and I’ll tell you why he’s a speaker not a leader.
I wonder if you’ll also be trying to get Your Party to join Liberate Scotland if you where you left it out.
It seems to me that no change in the status of Scotland should be made without a referendum (in Scotland).
It would be wrong for a party that just gained a majority to impose independence. Therefore I think it’s right for ‘Your Party’ to have “holding a referendum on independence” as its policy.
Scotland isn’t in a voluntary union its been annexed by England. Your party isn’t a nationalist party its a unionist party who are going to field candidates in England, Wales and Scotland to obtain power at Westminster which is a English parliament. Scotland shouldn’t have to ask for permission to leave the union and if Your Party wasn’t a unionist party it would have at the core the policy of upon becoming the government at Westminster on day one freedom will be given to every nations in this union, we never were asked to join so why should we ask to leave.
Absolutely correct 100% Yes. We cannot now leave it to a referendum because that electorate will include large numbers of colonial settlers who will vote against us.
Self-determination means just that. And “Self” in this context means “Scots” and only Scots.
So if “Your Party” gets a Parliamentary majority with 33% of the votes cast on a 60% turnout, you think it would be right for it to break off Scotland into a separate country, even if a large majority of Scots opposed independence?
(Just to be clear, I’m personally in favour of an independent Scotland, but I think that achieving it like that would be abominably anti-democratic and could well lead to civil unrest in Scotland.)
You need to change your name to PayAttention My Country isn’t in a voluntary union its been annexed by England and if you wanted to remain English then move to England its that simple. PayAttention Scotland has been annexed by England all the Scots would be asking for is for Scotland to be returned back to its people, I would have though the Scottish people would be 100% behind that idea I’m sorry your not, but then I have no idea who you ware you could be English for all I know.
Haven’t seen a poll to date that shows an overwhelming majority for independence. Obviously, it’s Scotland’s choice but I wouldn’t assume if all the facts were laid out that people would support it. As regards to all the english needing to move to england remember that works both ways. YP shouldn’t get tied down in noise from the provinces, IMO.
Why can’t I have a say? Scotland is in the UK and a constitutional change affects us all. I suggest a referendum on whether Scotland can stay in.
When you say ‘Why can’t you have a say’, I assume you are speaking as someone domiciled in England. I’ll offer you two reasons why the English shouldn’t have a say on Scottish independence; (1) there are 10 times more English voters than Scottish voters which would completely skew any result and (2) more importantly, the right to self determination, enshrined in the UN Charter forbids any external parties from interfering in that process.
On another point I entirely agree with Craig’s view that Palestine should exist from the river to the sea. Given the above mentioned right to self determination in the UN Charter, the only course of action which should have been supported by the UN at the end of the British mandate was towards the creation of a Palestinian State. Whether and how many European and other Jews were allowed to emigrate to a sovereign Palestine would then have been the responsibility of the Palestinian Government. The plight of the European Jews post WW2 should have been the responsibility of Europe and the USA and was nothing to do with the Palestinians. I believe that this abrogation of the central tenet of the UN Charter greatly undermined it’s credibility pretty much from its inception.
How is the UK today different to Czechoslovakia in 1992? The United Kingdom would be splitting into a part that comprised England, Wales and Northern Ireland and a part that was Scotland, just as Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.. Why shouldn’t all citizens of the United Kingdom have a vote on this split? This is not the same as say, Kenya becoming independent of the British Empire. Much as independence supporters like to imagine Scotland an English colony, history is aqgainst them, in that Scotland was never conquered by force of arms, nor was it an uninhabited land colonised by the English.
One part of Czechoslovakia did not annex the other. Scotland was annexed by England in 1707 and handed a duff violated and worthless one-sided treaty like many other colonies. England was simply re-branded as UK, whenever it suits. The addition of a few Scots into the Westminster parliament made no difference then or now.
‘His liberation is a matter for the colonized only’ (Memmi).
No, indeed, the case of Czechoslovakia is different in that Czechia and Slovakia did not have different legal systems, which Scotland and the rest of Great Britain do. Scotland has every right to want its own sovereign parliament back that it lost in 1707 and I wish them well in the endeavour, but trying to pretend that the union of the two parliaments somehow turned Scotland into a colony, which is manifestly false, isn’t going to help.
A policy position of ‘Your party’ based on the dissolution of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a recipe for disaster.
We already have the constituent parts of the UK state able to exercise their rights to self determination through a referendum, then. when 50% plus one vote to leave the UK state all the relevant parties can come together to thrash out the constitutional and financial measures required. (No small feat). Presumably taking the policy position of ‘Your Party’ to be Scottish Independence, Scottish members of ‘Your party’ will be encouraged to break up the UK state. Similar polices might apply to Wales and Northern Ireland. In my opinion this is all wishful thinking, ‘Your party’ advocating these radical proposals nationwide will crash and burn in short order.
As regards Northern Ireland, it is a fact that not one person resident there (1,8 million people) has the vote, Oh yes people are allowed to go along to the voting booth and put a form into a box, unfortunately they cannot vote for any of the parties that govern them, Labour, Conservative, Reform or Lib Dem etc, all of whom have taken a discriminatory position not to organize constituency organizations in the 18 available in the Province. After legal action the Labour NEC allowed NI citizens limited membership in a Province wide “constituency” (approx 2000 members, all with limited rights although they pay the full membership fee) this could be said to be taking money under false pretenses. If the aim of voting is to elect one of the above parties to govern, then voting in Northern Ireland is futile. Instead Catholics and Protestants or people of no religion have a stark choice, one of the Unionist parties, DUP, Ulster Unionist etc or one of the Nationalist parties Sinn Fein or SDLP etc. In other words, of the available seats in NI, those largely sectarian parties usually elect 5 or 6 seats each, that number is insignificant at Westminster (650 seats) only in the rare event of a hung parliament are votes from NI even considered important. This is not democracy, even Palestinians living within Israel proper have more voting rights than any resident of Northern Ireland, since they can vote for Netanyahu’s party, Likud) They don’t of course, but they could.
The English are the only part of the UK who don’t have a right of self determination.
With 84% of MPs representing English constituencies I think the English pretty much get what they want
JD Monkey;
A comedy turn? Well done, makes a refreshing change!
Here’s the thing, Mr Monkey:
When Scotland, Wales and the whole of Ireland get their freedom, England gets its freedom too. It will, for the first time in many centuries, have to stand on its own feet – without tribute looted from its colonies.
I look forward to that day – and I really hope you get your “self-determination” very soon indeed.
You think it’s an aspiration of any Irish person in that ahistorical, antidemocratic colonial creation to be represented by British Labour, Reform, Conservatives or LibDems?
My answer, Yes, it is entirely undemocratic for 1.8 million UK citizens of Northern Ireland to be denied the right to vote for or against the parties that govern them. So long as Northern Ireland is part of the UK they should have that right. When the Good Friday treaty was signed (1999) It was agreed by the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland by vast majorities, including Sinn Fein that the constitutional position of Northern Ireland within the UK would not change until a majority vote in NI agreed. Legislation was also past in the Republic and voted on there to change articles 2 and 3 of its constitution (which claimed jurisdiction over NI) to the similar provision of, allowing the people of Northern Ireland the right to self determination until they vote otherwise in a referendum. The only alternative to this was a continuing civil war in Northern Ireland eventually involving the whole of Ireland, or kicking Northern Ireland out of the UK against its will (something even a banana republic would not do) and kick start a civil war there. The Good Friday agreement is not perfect, in my opinion if NI is to remain part of the UK as per that agreement it is undemocratic to ban Catholics and Protestants from partaking in the electoral processes in the state they actually live in.
One of the good things to come out of the Good Friday agreement was the friendship which developed between Ian Paisley leader of the DUP and the leader of Sinn Fein Gerry Adams and the leader of the IRA Martin McGuinness, the IRA attempted to assassinate Paisley on several occasions. On Paisley’s death both praised Paisley and called him a true friend and visited him and his wife Eileen on many occasions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9eghzZISsc
They have always had the opportunity to vote for local ‘sister’ parties of the main British parties. On the majority nationalist side that has been the SDLP (colloquially known as the stoop down low party). They are affiliated with the Savile-Epstein party. On the minority unionist side the UUP has always been the sister party of the Tories. The DUP also propped up the Tory government in 2017. Nowhere in the occupied north, however, is there any demand or desire to vote for parties based in Britain.
The Northern Ireland political parties have traditionally been sectarian parties, where, because there was no alternative Catholics have voted for the Catholic Nationalist Sinn Fein and/or SDLP. Protestants who also had no alternatives voted for the Protestant and Unionist DUP and Ulster Unionists. It is predicted, some say it is a fact that there are more Catholics in NI than Protestants, I don’t doubt that, Also various opinion polls over the past couple of years (the life and times survey) indicate that more than half the Catholic community do not favour a united Ireland and are content to stay within the UK providing they are not discriminated against and nobody tries to wrap them in the Union Jack.
You say there is no demand to vote for parties based in Britain, that is simply not true, there is a Province wide campaign demanding this very thing. In Liverpool after the large influx of Irish after the famine into the docks areas of Liverpool, Liverpool became a hotbed for sectarian hatred, with numerous riots (all well documented in books of the period).
In fact there were Catholic political parties set up after the Ist World war who exercised a lot of power in the local council. There were 6 Protestant Councillors also who opposed them. Bessie Braddock also opposed them (though not on sectarian grounds) when the New Catholic cathedral was due to be built on the old work house site, she said we need more homes, not Priests.
The growth of the Labour party in Liverpool meant Catholic and Protestant workers could come together in a non sectarian party. The late Barry Porter MP (Birkenhead) acknowledged this when he said people could now forget their sectarian grievances and work together for the whole community.
Since you seem to know some history and are a stickler for democracy, remind me of where democracy was involved in the creation of this statelet “Northern Ireland”.
Did the Irish in their last nationwide election in 1918 vote some ahistorical “province” into existence on their island? Or was there some other little-known election I am unaware of where the Irish voted to bring it democratically into being?
Zoot, Northern Ireland was created as a separate legal entity in 1921, under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. This act was a result of the political division in Ireland, which was marked by the Irish War of Independence and the desire for self-rule. The partition of Ulster, which included four counties with unionist majorities and two counties with slight Irish nationalist majorities, was a key factor in the formation of Northern Ireland. This arrangement was put in place by Westminster to avoid a threatened civil war which Sir Edward Carson had threatened, he knew many, many Ulster volunteers fresh out of the Ist world war were ready to fight to remain part of the UK. The people of Ulster regarded themselves as separate from the South, whose society they regarded as a small farmers Republic dominated by the Catholic church. It was then, now things are different, the separation of church and state is manifesting into a much fairer society, the North had heavy industry Shipbuilding and manufacturing industries making the ‘economics’ of partition a viable prospect. When NI came into being the Unionists complained about Westminster giving the ‘six counties’ their own parliament, saying they wanted to be governed by Westminster just like other areas, recognizing that it would mean Protestants governing Catholics and a factory of grievances. So it turned out, fast forward 40 years and so it did turn out with the outbreak of violence during the 1960’s. I am not against a United Ireland only against a civil war to achieve it. A referendum on the border issue, as in Scotland is the only peaceful and democratic way to resolve the issue.
Forgive me Harry if I regard your democratic principles as a moveable feast.
The conservative party does stand candidates in Northern Ireland in general elections, but nobody votes for them (0.1% vote share in Northern Ireland in 2024). Before the early 1970s, the Unionist MPs always took the Tory whip. Following the Sunningdale agreement in 1973, the Unionists withdraw from the Conservative whip, and that was when independent unionist parties formed in Northern Ireland. Also the Alliance party of northern Ireland has close links with the libdems and the SDLP with the Labour party.
Harry Law;
“…We already have the constituent parts of the UK state able to exercise their rights to self determination through a referendum…”
A referendum that’s not rigged like the last one do you mean? No Unionist media interference, no last minute “vows”, and overseen by the UN and with observers at the count? Oh, and use a proper franchise unlike the peculiar town council model used last time?
If so then bring it on! Yes has been 53%+ for some considerable time now, despite the SNP and UK “media”. But I won’t hold my breath.
I agree the last Scottish referendum had a MSM bias in favour of ‘remain in the UK vote’. I do object to the claim it was rigged or any UK election is rigged. If that is the case, and I don’t think they are, why bother voting at all.
“We already have the constituent parts of the UK state able to exercise their rights to self determination through a referendum, ”
I very much doubt we will see another referendum in the UK on any subject for a very long time, after the Brexit referendum returned the Wrong Answer. Possibly we might have one on the reunification of Ireland, as that will be also under the aegis of the government of the Republic, but, even there, I would expect Westminster to fight tooth and nail against it.
Of course Your party is unionist. It is a child of the Labour movement in Britain which itself, is wholly unionist
A sad day
Your Party is not unionist. It simply is not. There is no such policy.
That is disingenuous, Craig. Unionism is the default position of any party campaigning for Westminster – UNLESS it declares otherwise. YP hasn’t.
The CP, for example, like much of the English left, just holds a traditional line that the British working class must not be divided. I expect that is what will emerge from the YP chat groups – if they ever get around to discussing the issue. I also wonder how you would convince the barely interested English majority to commit to Scottish independence while disparaging the Government and leaders Scots have actually elected for a couple of decades.
and discrediting the SNP (and presumably Alba now) too. What actually would be your pitch?
It does seem to me that having left the SNP and Alba etc over not getting elected your attraction to YP is that you might succeed with that one. Good luck with it But …….
Yes it is a unionist party and you should not be our ambassador for Scotland if you have indeed joined Your Party. Let me simply it for you Mr Murray if Your party wasn’t a unionist party it wouldn’t be contesting elections in Scotland, Wales or Ireland and it is and if like you say it isn’t a unionist party then I have to presume its a nationalist party and will be standing on a ticket of English Independence so I have to ask the Question why do you believe Scotland needs Your Party to say Scotland has the right to choose.
You have completely failed in your argument regarding Scotland being colonized by England when you have now joined a Unionist party and on your own words you say “It does not yet have a policy on Scottish Independence. I shall of course be striving for it actively to support Scottish Independence. I feel fairly confident that this will succeed.” so if Your Party hasn’t yet stated on the subject of Scottish Independence I have to ask why have you joined it. If I was Salvo our Liberation Scotland I would ask you to step down with immediate affect.
You are now our Achilles heel at the UN surely you realise you have made a fatal error in judgement.
I have no idea who your trying to con?
Yes. Craig’s position seems to be that having failed (in his view) to persuade SNP, Alba and God knows how many other parties, to campaign vigorously enough for Scottish Independence he will now arrange for it to be spearheaded from Islington?
Moving from Och Aye! to Cor Blimey!
It’s a pity. I admire and respect his campaigning work and I hope he keeps at it , but I can’t help feeling that politically he is a basket case.
Many leftist former Corbynistas seem to be throwing their full backing behind the Greens, for example: Owen Jones, Aaron Bastani; Matt Zarb-Cousin et al. And polling suggests they are well placed to capitalise on Labour’s declining support.
However, I’m not entirely convinced by Zack Polanski. It’s no more than simply skepticism at this point. But his history; things like jumping on the antisemitism bandwagon to bash Corbyn c.2018. And then his attack on BBC’s Question Time a few weeks back, against Reform’s Zia Yusuf, over alleged historic links to Russia, make me think he may not be quite the radical he presents himself as. Anyone on the left who is totally trustful of the U.S. while being deeply hostile to Russia and China, is immediately a bit sus imho. Most genuine leftists have a jaded view of Ukraine and Zelenskyy; they know about the western interference that drove the Euromaidan revolution. And they know about the bad faith and rejectionism that surrounded the Minsk I&II negotiations. As for China, there is no reason for any leftist to have a hostile opinion or see them as our adversary. Even the hawkish UK, under pressure from the U.S, struggled to justify the adversary designation. As the collapse of the spy case revealed.
If you want to know if someone is really a leftist, ask them their opinions of Russia and China.
The Green Party’s name suggests that it prioritizes green policies, not socialist policies.
An example from its 2024 manifesto:
The UK emits less than half as much CO2 per capita as the USA. Until the USA reduces its per capita emissions to something in the vicinity of ours, it is worse than pointless to reduce ours further – the effect on global CO2 would be negligible and our industry would be even less able to compete.
So I don’t see the Greens as primarily a socialist party; I see them as a single-issue party, and on that single issue, some of their policies are wrong-headed.
The obsession with CO2 is an example of the mass psychosis that grips the wokerati. Pollution and deforestation are some of the real green issues but there’s not much discussion about that, probably because there’s no money in it !!
All three of those characters you name started urgently promoting a zionist ‘antisemitism’ scam when Corbyn was elected Labour leader, then went back to never mentioning the ‘issue’ again as soon as he was replaced.
It is no surprise they sprang immediately to legitimate Mr Polanski, a man of the same ilk, with the difference that stood as a LibDem candidate after the coalition government experience.
Notice that neither they nor the wider political-media class encourage any questioning of why this individual suddenly and dramatically changed all his political views in his 40s.
Fifth columnists working for you know who, with the objective of destabilising the UK, all dressed up as cuddly, diverse planet saving heroes. The vote of choice for woke, middle class fuckwits. IMO 🙂
Goose: And Venezuela.
Owen Jones wasn’t a Corbynista, he helped the antisemitism lie. The point about the Greens is that they are a bourgeois partei.
The leaders of the Green Party, going into the leadership election, were totally blindsided by a rush of young people joining the party, and a young triad of male leadership, 2 Jewish, one Muslim. The ladies of a certain age, who had fought off fracking, hugged trees, and campaigned with Greenpeace, have been replaced with a media savvy excellent speaker and advocate for environmentally positive policies. So my suspicion is that he has been groomed to split the Labour vote. Your Party gets occasional media coverage of Corbyn and Sultana being crystal clear about where the moral high ground lies, but the laziest, and most useless, MP still gets more media and airtime than all the rest put together to spout divisive rhetoric without facing accountability as he sports mighty friendships from across the pond.
Meanwhile Israel has stopped playing nice and is back onto Gaza with bigger and better bombs. Ukraine is unleashing powerful drone attacks across Russia’s energy, and industrial centres, and also including Moscow itself and cities around. Ukraine is still low on active fighting men and boots on the ground in Russia but it is taking the initiative at this time, while the Russian Navy prepares its fleet of nuclear armed ships in the Arctic Circle, ready to head out in any which way direction.
Bluff and double bluff, and people getting hurt and losing their lives, and no sign of peace in any of their playbooks. Meanwhile we focus on destroying Prince Andrew and ignoring all the powerful men he associated with who have not, so far, been discredited, not mentioning the ones who have not yet faced up to their abuses of privilege. Andrew’s stupidity shone a light into those dark places and he is being made to pay by the powerful echelon and networks he could yet reveal.
I just hope the aborted launch and surrounding Sultana – Corbyn bickering haven’t undermined Your Party. They were registering in polls prior to that false start, despite not being officially launched. The launch fiasco allowed lots of critics to dismiss them as an unprofessional, volatile rabble, and claim the party was DOA. Not good.
They clearly need more discipline among the leadership, without that becoming oppressive control freakery when it comes to what the members can and can’t debate. Very few politicians have the capability to get this right, because it’s a difficult balance and you sometimes have to be willing to defend letting the democratic chips fall where they may.
“without that becoming oppressive control freakery when it comes to what the members can and can’t debate”
The devil is in the constitutional detail and straight out of the gate they have fallen at the internal democracy fence.
Good luck!
The state is the problem, not a solution.
Rojava & Chiapas have shown that governance is possible without centralised state control and indeed works far better.
A Palestinian state would be just as ethno-nationalist as a Jewish state, I refer to Emma Goldman’s piece on this:
“for an ardent socialist to say that the Jews have no business in Palestine seems to me rather a strange kind of socialism”
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1938/on-zionism.html
The Iraqi anarchists have sold out to American Caesar and will reap the whirlwind.
A strange comment. What Emma Goldman wrote in 1938 has no relevance today. Palestinians don’t want an ethno-nationalist state like Israel. The kind of state that Palestinians want is described in Hamas’ 2017 statement of objectives; for example, article 17 begins:
There are (or were, until Israel’s recent bombing obliterated them) Christian communities and Christian churches in the Gaza strip.
I am glad you are getting involved as I know Corbyn respects your voice. It is unsettling that he continues to surround himself with unrepentant promoters of the zionist ‘antisemitism’ psyop and the ‘two-state solution’ nonsense. Also that he is falling hook, line and sinker for new, even more glaring frauds like your old mate Adnan Hussain.
I think the green party would be a better left wing choice, especially under the new leadership. And the greens in Scotland are independent to those in England and Wales, and are pro independence. Also there is an increasing tendency to split the left wing vote. Which means they may end up with very few seats in Parliament despite a huge vote share. I could even see the Greens and Your Party getting about 15% each and between then getting 10 or fewer seats, whilst the Farage outfit gets a similar total vote share of 30% and romps home with a comfortable majority.
Splitting the vote is the objective because it enables the ‘right’ party to get into power.
Let’s see some real manifestos and plans for helping the UK and its citizens to get back on their feet. Chasing unicorns and orange blimps don’t cut it.
The main problem with the Green Party is that it is going to face a massive backlash when the Anthropogenic Global Warming idea is exposed for the hoax it has been all along an all the people who have made sacrifices to “save the planet” realise they’ve been conned.
” while there is plainly a huge amount of plotting for control, I don’t see anything we the members – and I am now one – cannot sweep aside as we get the party going.”
That worked so well for the Labour Party. Already I’m disillusioned. Somebody has started out as they mean to carry on.
So Scotland now has at least 4 Scottish only independent parties, 2 which I didn’t know existed until reading this article, then you have the greens which sounds like a seperate enough entity to the English greens to warrant their independence motivations seriously, and now bonnie Scotland is going to have a 6th party that is anti unionist. Won’t this divide the independence movement in Scotland?. as someone south of the border I’m all for Scotland gaining their freedom but it feels like it’s less likely now than it was back in 2014 when there seemed more focus and unity (from my limited observations on Scottish politics).
The basic problem Adrian is that the SNP dropped any real intention of acheiving Independence. That is why the movement split.
Oh Craig, I wish you well but that’s an exercise in futility. Liarbour members have said that since In Place of Strife.
Your Party does seem the best option at present, though I’m not at all hopeful given the massive divisions between socially conservative Pakistani MPs and the wider public especially younger people. Also Zarah Sultana seems very impulsive which is a very poor quality in politicians.
However the whole concept of sortition is deeply flawed and vulnerable to all sorts of abuses.
1) Who or what will actually do the random sorting? An offical, a computer, or a randomly chosen person? All three options are open to manipulation.
2) Cliques and parties will still form in any assembly of people however they’re selected.
3) The whole idea comes mainly from Extinction Rebellion which is a literally insane organisation whose origins give me no confidence that they work for the best interests of human beings.
4) As you say, Craig, many members of the foundation conference will not actually by elected by sortition, and these unelected persons will probably aim to shepherd the unstructured mass of the randomly selected delegates.
5) Just as with jury service some people can claim exemption, it will be the same with sortition, so for instance young mothers, shift workers, disabled people who have difficulty travelling, will be far more likely to opt out of the sortition process. So although sortition does provide a more representative sample, it is still not fully representative, which is important given that this is its only potential benefit.
There is no such thing as a perfect political system and I note you don’t offer a better one than sortition. Sortition may have its flaws, but they not as great as the flaws of having elected delegates. The quest for perfection usually ends up with nothing at all, as there is no alternative to the discarded imperfect candidates, like the family who end up picnicking in a layby next to the sewage works because all the previous potential picnic spots weren’t quite right and now they are too hungry to care.
“who end up picnicking in a layby next to the sewage works because all the previous potential picnic spots weren’t quite right and now they are too hungry to care.”
But that’s no reason to go straight to the layby next to the sewage works.
Good luck with exerting a good influence in YP, but why not also write a book, a Manifesto that contains your views of what an ideal party should stand for, motivated by those ideals and principles you strongly support, and based on your extensive study of History and diplomatic and political experience. Such a volume, even if modest in size, might exert its own influence, and be a worthwhile reference for the activists of the future, whether or not YP works out for you.
On second thoughts, perhaps it will be a good thing for you to be a member, you could report on how things are being done, like you did in the Salmond trial…. At least they can’t put you in prison.
Wow. That’s quite a lot to sweep aside. I sincerely wish you luck with that (well, apart from the whole independence issue, which leaves me indifferent at best and, honestly, looks like a distraction to me). I can’t say I feel optimistic. How the most idiotic and wrong-headed ideas and people manage to usurp every new hopeful left-wing project from the very beginning is beyond me. It seems that the people and groups pulling the strings are simply opposed to democracy and are deeply stuck in the identity politics nonsense of about ten years ago, mixed with fuzzy anarchist silliness from the Occupy Wall Street days – all of which they see as a pretext to oppose democracy, again just as the tendency was ten years ago. Except that democracy is now under massive assault from the right (and I include Labour in that category without hesitation) as well. As if a new left party didn’t have its job cut out for it fighting enormously powerful and evil forces in modern UK society, they have decided that the main problem they have to tackle is inventing an alternative to democracy within the party. Apparently not getting that this was a huge part of what ruined Labour in the first place.
Ffs Craig 🤦🏻♂️
It’s an English party. England won’t liberate us, only we can do that.
Why you’re not joining Liberate Scotland & standing for them, I really don’t know.
He walks about in a kilt calling himself a Scot but is heart is always for England. How we have been conned.
Yes, groomed as a colonial clerk with perks….does some more gravy beckon?
You could have helped spearhead the gathering of the Yes movement.
You are a good speaker, a great researcher.
Corbyn is a lazy speaker he doesn’t have your communication skills because he is a complacent middle class who has never needed to be heard, he is an abysmal bourgeoise cardigan, is any English party a good idea or just comfortable?
I would have had more respect if you said you were going to concentrate on research for Scotland’s exit from the colony, or even that you had a festival to organise.
But not this joke
The Empire is dead , democracy is being smothered to death what little we had.
If parties are constantly attacked then a peoples movement.The Yes movement was all party, non party and cross party just ordinary folk and we invoked nation states and global corporations and secret services and despotic drunken thugs from Lodges against us. Just for being free thinking Scots people with a civic conscience. Look at Venezuela and South and Central American people now who are seen as expendable yet they defy the American war machine. There is no compromise out last referendum was sabotaged and rigged. The media is just propaganda. We need alternative voices in the media. That is your forte.
Meanwhile, the petition against Starmer’s sinister ID card plans approaches a significant milestone. Please sign the petition and help to protect our privacy:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194
Re: ‘I was a member of the Alba Party until the leadership made very plain I was unwanted, for reasons that don’t seem any more profound than their personal ambitions.’
And here was me thinking it was because last year our host stood as a candidate for a rival political party, whose leader had founded another political party three years earlier specifically to campaign against Scottish independence, which fielded not one but two candidates against the Alba party in that same election – although in one case all that did was spare Alba the embarrassment of coming last.
P.S. Not sure what Liber8 is. All I can find online is a charity that provides counselling services for adults and young people in Lanarkshire. Does our host mean Liberate Scotland? The less said about that the better.
The pile on today, against Zarah Sultana is ridiculous, and worse, much of it is coming from people in various govt and NATO funded cutouts. The bizarre aspect, is that Sultana condemned Putin’s invasion, called Putin a dictator (which isn’t correct, as he has a democratic mandate, albeit one from a restricted candidate field) and a gangster – which is entirely western framing. What really infuriates them though, is her criticism of the UK billions sent to Ukraine : In 2025, the UK has committed up to £21.8 billion in support to Ukraine, which includes £13 billion in military aid and up to £5.3 billion in non-military support. And her criticism of NATO. Are we so intolerant of differing opinions that only one view is permitted? Reeves is about to tell the UK, she’ll have to break their manifesto promise and the Guardian reported the NHS needs an urgent £3 billion funding injection to avoid having to implement cutbacks. Should the priority be weapons for Ukraine, or British people – I think we know what most people would say.
How can we claim to have free functioning political parties when new parties haven’t just govt ministers to contend with, but all these others with undeclared links to govt? Oz Katerji is critical Sultana, Paul Mason is attacking her. Oz has been based in Kyiv and presents a discussion show that seems to get a pitifully small audiences https://www.youtube.com/@Oz.Katerji. Presumably whoever is behind it, wanted something to rival Galloway’s MOATS? Katerji has been accused of LARPING – Live action role-playing i.e. cosplaying in flak jacket and helmet from regions at war, but where such body armor isn’t justified by any imminent danger. As for Mason, he seems to have dropped all pretense of being on the left. He’s like a sworn opponent of anyone to the left of Starmer, which is basically everyone.
If only Pensioners would turn off their heating, and miss a few meals, then we may be able to finance long range missiles into Russian cities and put UK boots on the ground and planes in the air (Starmer). As well as sending billions of pounds to Ukraine to fight a guaranteed losing war. what could possibly go wrong?
Yes, and who needs dentists?
Have you noticed how Starmer never looks happier than when in the company of Zelenskyy, or when pushing for long-range strike capability against Russia.
Such a strange, weird Labour leader. He seemingly doesn’t give a flying fcuk about the risks of escalation. And because of his dull, bespectacled exterior, the media present him as sensible.
The whole notion, often repeated by Starmer, von der Leyen; Stubb, Kallas et al : that Russia, only understands strength, and thus can be beaten into submission, may be completely and catastrophically wrong.
This is why they’ll defend the rotten two-party system to the bitter end. They know FPTP is failing the UK, but these intolerant people simply wouldn’t know how to cope with openly ‘communist parties’ winning seats under proportional representation; people who’d make Zarah Sultana seem like a centrist. They’d never admit, conservatism is killing the UK.
Corbyn himself has been constant in his criticism of Putin.
https://jeremycorbyn.org.uk/crisis-in-ukraine/
However his belief that refusing Ukraine arms will bring about a negotiated settlement is nothing short of naive. That and his policy on immigration will be enough to relegate Your Party into a side show without wondering how to reconcile the views of conservative Islamists with the British left on matters such as blasphemy laws and women’s/gay/trans rights.
However his belief that refusing Ukraine arms will bring about a negotiated settlement is nothing short of naive.
It is the Ukranians that have consistently, since the beginning of the war, opposed a negotiated settlement. Indeed, Zelensky even made negotiating with Russia against the law. Indeed,if the West hadn’t promised arms in the first place,there would have been no war,or, at least a very short one. (Yes, I know you think that’s al a lie,simply because it wasn’t reported by your favourite propaganda outfits, but that doesn’t make it so.) Also,if the US hadn’t meddled in the internal affairs of a sovereign state and fomented a coup to depose a democratically elected government in 2014, none of this would have happened.
” Zelensky even made negotiating with Russia against the law. ”
Well, no, he didn’t. In 2022 a decree was issued that reaching a settlement with Putin, not Russia, was an impossibility.
https://kyivindependent.com/didnt-zelensky-impose-a-ban-on-talks-with-putin-not-really/
Rendering Ukraine defenceless will just enable Russia to take whatever it wants. There will be no negotiation. If you hadn’t noticed it’s Putin who’s been talking peace whilst still continuing to bomb civilians.
https://theconversation.com/vladimir-putins-bombing-of-ukrainian-civilians-wont-end-the-war-any-faster-so-why-is-he-doing-it-257630
If you want to see what deliberately targeting civilians looks like, look at Gaza. Or at the West’s own Dresden or Hiroshima, for that matter. If Putin had been doing that, things would look very different. The suggestion that his strikes had no targets outside of just offing a number of random Ukrainian civilians is Western (and Ukrainian) propaganda. On the other hand, expecting Putin to stop fighting, including desisting from air strikes, just in order to be able to *talk* about the potential conditions for peace is absurd.
There is no reason to assume that there is no intermediate situation between the current Western-sponsored strength of Ukraine, which allows it to refuse to make any real concessions whatsoever, and a total collapse of Ukraine allowing Russia to take everything it wants.
Banning negotiating with Putin and with Russia clearly means the same thing in the current situation and has the same effect – preventing a negotiated settlement. This is so obvious that I have to doubt that you are even a *victim* of propaganda.
“Rendering Ukraine defenceless will just enable Russia to take whatever it wants.”
What does it want and why is that any business of the UK’s? In any case, it is not a case of “rendering Ukraine defenceless”. The West has supplied Ukraine with a huge amount of arms, armour and money and they have managed to lose the lot. Logic says that providing more will have exactly the same result. The only difference if Ukraine has to stop fighting now is that less Ukranians will be dead. Why are you so keen that more Ukranians are killed? Are you still labouring under the delusion that Ukraine is winning this war, or do you just think Ukranian lives are of so little value that it is better that they die, just to make Russia’s inevitable victory the costlier for them?
“If you hadn’t noticed it’s Putin who’s been talking peace whilst still continuing to bomb civilians.”
No, but I have noticed the Ukranian strategy of hiding all their military installations in built up areas to make sure there are enough civilian casualties to allow the Western MSM to make claims like this.
If there is any road to a negotiated settlement at all, it definitely involves refusing Ukraine arms or credibly threatening to do so. What is naive is to think that Ukraine won’t make concessions if it is left without Western help. Ukrainian nationalism and Russophobia only reached their current strength in most of the country thanks to massive Western financial support and encouragement over many years. IMO, it’s also unlikely that Putin would use that situation to just annex all of Ukraine and have a new hornet’s nest on his hands for the foreseeable future as result. I think he is aware of the limits of his power and that he can’t afford maximalist goals. So some kind of compromise does indeed seem likely. It’s the West that has been averse to any and all compromises.
I don’t see how ‘conservative Islamists’ are relevant. The fact that Your Party is against genocide of Muslims or Arabs and against the demonisation and scapegoating of immigrants does not mean that it aims to represent ‘conservative Islamists’. It’s sufficient to look at a random picture of Zarah Sultana to see that it is not the conservative Muslim vote she is primarily seeking to court.
” If there is any road to a negotiated settlement at all, it definitely involves refusing Ukraine arms or credibly threatening to do so. ”
That’s not the road to a negotiated settlement, that’s the path to surrender and appeasement which won’t achieve a lasting peace.
We are talking about the same thing, but just using different names for it. What Corbyn and I call a negotiated settlement, you call ‘appeasement’ and ‘surrender’. Why not admit that you just don’t *want* any negotiated settlement, i.e. any concessions to Russia whatsoever? The only way to achieve ‘lasting peace’ for you would be a total Russian defeat. And, if you think about it, making the ‘peace’ *truly* ‘lasting’ would also require the dismemberment of Russia afterwards. And by ‘lasting peace’, you really mean the elimination of any adversaries of the West and total Western imperial control of the region. Well, this ambition for total Western dominance is precisely what has caused all this death and destruction in the first place.
Winston Churchill told you how to achieve a lasting peace: First, stay united and strong, then Russia won’t dare to attack you. Second, respect Russia’s concerns for the safety of her western borders, or else she’ll be provoked. This formula worked for 45 years, but since 1991 the 2nd half has been ignored.
Like all rising powers, Russia would rather settle than start a war; like all declining powers, the US and their satellites would rather start a war than settle, so now we have a war. Putin gave you the last chance to settle in Dec 2021, but you refused. You refused before Putin began “killing civilians” (fact check: only about 15,000 civilians were killed by both sides since Feb 2022 according to UN; a remarcably low number for any war, maybe 1-2% of total casualties) because ANY settlement with Putin will be the end of the world as you know it.
This is why your talk about negotiated settlement is just empty words. You never had this in mind, you do not want it now and you never will.
Pear Morgaine
Instead of looking for ‘ hope ‘ for Ukraine winning look for a Peace Deal.
Life’s not fair and all that.
Russian occupies 20 % at least of Ukraine and that is a fact.
If you liberals want to pretend that just a few more missiles and more dead Ukrainians is
the answer – you and the EU and the UK are deluded or in complete denial.
I am not in favour of vainglorious but brave Ukranian’s fighting on until the last Ukranian but it seems that you Mertz/Starmer and Macron are.
Trump has talked a good game but he’s Offski – simple as that and Europe can not guarantee themselves any security without US Article 5 back up.
So, basically unless you and the Guardian want to carry on this self deception then there is no more I can say.
It all started off as a lie and it’s going to end in a lie.
” only about 15,000 civilians were killed by both sides since Feb 2022 according to UN ”
Oh well that’s alright then. Except that these are only the people positively identified by the UN who openly admit that the real number is much higher. Over 2,000 were children and what of those left mentally or physically disfigured by Russia’s deliberate targeting?
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/07/1165366
Whoever controls the ‘Heartland’ a geopolitical area including the huge area of Ukraine, controls the world, concluded Halford Mackinder in his series of books, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carters Nat Sec advisor followed Mackinders theory in his book ‘the grand chessboard’, Clinton and Bush wanted to include that great geopolitical prize Ukraine in NATO. Ukraine with NATO missiles a few minutes flying time from Moscow and NATO bases sealing Russia off from the Mediterranean and western Europe was a geopolitical prize not to be missed, against the advice of many political scientists and Ambassadors, in particular George Kennan who warned this would be a fateful mistake, and could mean war.
The powers that be in the US thought Russia weak or as ‘wet start’ Johnny McCain thought ‘a gas station posing as a nation’ now we know, and the US fearing a huge loss of credibility refuses to admit defeat, since no Americans are dying.. yet.
The Ukrainian panhandler appears to have Germany, France and the UK on his side, but for how long since Starmer is reported to be the worst PM in UK history with an approval rating of 12%? The other leaders are watching their economies tank with approval ratings just as low.
The borders of much of Europe have been changing regularly over the past 200 years. The notion that we could engage in a nuclear exchange over whether Russian speaking peoples in Crimea and four Oblast’s who have voted by large majorities to be part of the Russian Federation and are now officially included in the Russian constitution, is ludicrous. The Neocon gambit on world hegemony has failed, spectacularly, what could be left is a landlocked Ukraine, forever at the teat of the EU (whatever is left of it) and a chastened US to face the BRICS alone and in a multi polar world.
“That’s not the road to a negotiated settlement, that’s the path to surrender and appeasement which won’t achieve a lasting peace.”
I see you buy into the myth that if Britain had stood up to Hitler earlier, WWII would have been avoided, when in fact, all it would have meant was that it started a bit earlier and Britain would still have been losing until the US joined in on their side, whereas if Britain had not declared war on Germany in 1939, it might have not lost against Japan in the Far East.
Unfortunately, as they say in the US, “The Brits never saw a war they didn’t like”, as today’s jingoism proves.
“Oh well that’s alright then.”
Well obviously not, duh, but it’s a lot lower in percentage terms than when the US or any of its “allies” goes to war, including WWII.
“Except that these are only the people positively identified by the UN who openly admit that the real number is much higher.”
Your link only talks about Ukranian casualties. Are they, like you, trying to pretend that there are no Russian casualties from Ukraine’s deliberate targeting? Does the UN actually give figures for Russian casualties at all?
If people knew how much the UK was spending in Ukraine, I’d wager a heck of a lot more people would be against support continuing. It’s only because all the major parties are in agreement + newspapers, that it isn’t a major issue.
In one sustained salvo the other night, Ukraine reportedly blew through 10 Storm Shadow missiles – that’s £20 million worth of fireworks used to hit a chemical plant in Russia. This, while the NHS is starved of cash.
And no, I don’t think who controls the Russian-speaking Donbas, is existential, in terms of the UK’s future, not now, nor in the future. Zelenskyy is out of step with most Ukrainians, who now simply want this over, according to polling. They are running into serious manpower issues too.
Zelenskyy’s approval rating is still way more than most western leaders can only dream about.
It’s not exactly a level political playing field.
In peacetime, with his decisions scrutinised and challenged, his superficial popularity would drop like a stone. I honestly think one of the reasons he wants this to continue, is because he fears any reckoning after the war. Especially if they lose territory, which seems likely. He’s played a role setting up unreasonable expectations for the outcome, to justify continued fighting.
They can hide their losses and those left disabled and traumatised for now, as it’s classed as sensitive information. But post-conflict, questions of whether those losses and injured were justifiable, will come to the fore.
Why give so much credence to Zelensky’s approval ratings as measured by Gallup and Ipsos? [*]
The most we can say is there can’t be enough dissatisfaction in the military to cause the military leaders to remove him. Information on whether the controllers of opinion within the military feel they’re experiencing big problems or not would be interesting, but it’s not exactly easy to obtain for those without non-rich Ukrainian friends.
Many or most of the rich have either decamped completely or else they’ve got one foot inside the country and another outside it and presumably the foot they’re keeping inside Ukraine is making them big-time war profits, because why else would they bother?
FWIW there have been no parliamentary or presidential elections in Ukraine since 2019.
Note
* I assume this is as a war leader rather than as a comedian who pretends to play Hava Nagila on a piano with his penis. (Why anyone thinks that kind of thing is funny to watch for six whole minutes is unclear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oua0Puihrkc#t=5m07s )
” FWIW there have been no parliamentary or presidential elections in Ukraine since 2019. ”
In accordance with their constitution. Not unusual for countries to delay elections during times of crisis. The UK went without a General Election for eight years as a result of WW1 and ten due to WW2.
Zelenski will have to make a choice soon – suitcase* or coffin.
[*to his € multi-million Italian vineyard]
Pears: Have you actually read the story yourself? There is nothing there about “Russia deliberately targeting” anything except infrastructure. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/07/1165366
Re Sultana – condemning Putin’s invasion is fine, but anyone who does so without also condemning Ukraine’s glorification of historical genocidal fascists and integration of modern-day ones into its politics and armed forces, its 2014 coup and the subsequent violent suppression of resistance against it – including the Odessa massacre as well as the military operations against the People’s Republics – and its numerous human rights violations is discrediting themselves as a pawn of Western Empire.
Oz Katerji spent much of the Syrian civil war personally harassing anyone in the West who opposed Western imperial support for Sunni supremacist theocratic terrorists. This is enough to tell you everything about whose hireling he is. How this individual can even still be considered relevant is beyond me.
The type of person that Paul Mason is has cropped up again and again during the history of the workers’ movement and those who present themselves as part of it. There is nothing new about such operators.
The swilling stew of vomit that he serves up may be a product of the internet era, but the type, the type – no. We’ve seen it all before many times.
The Government of the UK has become completely immoral and has lost all legitimacy. Scots are a decent people and want nothing more to do with it.
All fine upstanding citizens like the Murrells and Fred Goodwin.
If ‘SNP’ were substituted for ‘Government of the UK’, would the result not reflect widespread opinion North of the border?
My point is that human nature is the same on either side of the border.
Credit to Jo Swinson where it’s due, for calling out the rising wave of nationalism on both sides of the border.
Your kind is different.
A clear majority of English people want nothing more to do with it, either.
Good!
As long as the right people have influence the party will be more to country´s benefit than detriment.
There is no perfect solution. You gotta start somewhere.
As I commented a while back, the same centrifugal forces are present with Germany´s youngest party built around Sarah Wagenknecht. But they do not let themselves get undermined either, by the MSM propaganda and campaigning.
Be steady…
Labour MP Dawn Butler has written a letter, for which she is seeking co-signatories, to the parliamentary “commissioner for standards” the Orthodox Jew (and therefore extreme racist) Daniel Greenberg, asking him to investigate Jewish Reform MP Sarah Pochin’s racist statement about how she hates seeing so many black and Asian people in advertisements.
While I applaud Butler’s effort, even though it’s poorly written, and I hope Independent Alliance (soon to be Your Party) and SNP MPs (and for that matter MPs from other parties) will sign it, because she is definitely 100% right on this matter, she may be pissing into the wind.
“Dear Mr Greenberg,
Following advice from the Deputy Speaker, we are writing regarding comments made by the Member of Parliament for Runcorn and Helsby, Sarah Pochin, which we believe constitute a breach of the Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament.
On Saturday 25 October 2025, during a TalkTV phone-in, Sarah Pochin MP stated: “It drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people.”
Although Ms Pochin later issued a statement describing her comments as “poorly phrased”, she repeated her belief that the advertising industry had gone “DEI mad” and that adverts were “unrepresentative of British society as a whole.”
We believe these remarks are racist. They single out Black and Asian people and frame their visibility as a problem.
Members of Parliament are required to uphold the highest standards of integrity, accountability, and respect as set out in the Nolan Principles of Public Life.
It is our collective view that Ms Pochin’s remarks undermine the Nolan Principles of Objectivity and Honesty, as her claim that the representation of Black and Asian people in advertising suggests that whiteness is the normative identity, while minoritised communities are outsiders or exceptions. However, Black and Asian people have lived, worked and contributed to Britain for centuries and almost 20% of the UK population are Black, Asian, or Minority Ethnicity.
Ms Pochin also fails to demonstrate Leadership, Integrity, and Selflessness by promoting division based on skin colour. This rhetoric risks emboldening those who view diversity as a threat, normalising racial exclusion and hatred. The Nolan Principles require Members to uphold the integrity and reputation of the House, act with respect, and avoid conduct that discriminates against others. Ms Pochin’s comments clearly fall short of these standards.
We ask you to formally investigate whether the Member of Parliament for Runcorn and Helsby’s remarks constitute a breach of the Code of Conduct and assess her conduct against the Nolan Principles of Public Life.
Public office is a privilege that carries moral responsibility, and the public expects Members of Parliament to lead by example. Statements that single out or diminish entire groups of people based on race have no place in public life. We therefore urge you to take this matter seriously and ensure that the standards of this House reflect an inclusive, respectful, and diverse Britain.
Thank you for your consideration of this matter. Due to the public interest in this subject, we will publish this letter.
Yours sincerely,
Dawn Butler MP
Member of Parliament for Brent East“
You’re right …it’s very poorly written.
Diana Butler’s seems like quite a commendable letter to me, speaking against racism.
Misrepresenting what she actually said.
‘She said on TalkTV that ‘it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people’, adding that ‘it doesn’t reflect our society’ and ‘your average white person, average white family’ is not represented any more.’
Whilst her comments may trigger the wokerati she is only stating what everyone can see every single day. And she’s right. Let’s occasionally see some adverts showing white families with female mum’s and male dad’s and their white kids. Or maybe all this DIE stuff really means get whitey.
“Public office is a privilege that carries moral responsibility, and the public expects Members of Parliament to lead by example.”
Is she living in a ’50s time warp?
Good luck Craig! Watch out for all the MI5 plants!
“(Darren Jones, chief secretary to the prime minister, told Cabinet on Tuesday that) we have to build a new state and shut down the legacy state, with digital ID making people’s experience of that new state fundamentally much better.” (BBM)
Welcome to China!
Or is it Steve Bannon and Silcon Valley-land?
Is there much difference? (Quite interesting that Bannon identifies as a fan of Lenin.)
These guys totally understand that all the “remember your passwords” stuff and the “choose when to hold your phone and when to put it down” stuff will soon be “legacy” and was only ever transitional.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/labour-keir-starmer-cabinet-prime-minister-chancellor-b2854033.html
Ooh – this interesting.
I applaud Craig for temporarily putting aside his SNP hat – I really do.
It should be a lesson for all.
Do you go for the man with a gun first or the man with knife?
The Gun Man is Farage and Reform.
The Knife men are the one’s who sabotage every leftish alternative as a matter of course.
The former is extremely dangerous the latter (Starmer ) is annoying and not as dangerous – yet.
So, in a brotherly/sisterly and any other ‘ly’ spirit we have to look at the task in hand not a British Utopia.
Or even a Scottish one for that matter.
Yes – every particular part of society should be represented in Your party otherwise it is no better than the
Mainstream parties.
But the name of the imminent game is to stop Reform ( and the Conservatives by the way) by any means
necessary to coin a phrase.
Why?
Because reform want to supress anybody who isn’t like them.
The ‘Others ‘ and that stretches form immigrants to Trans genders and so on.
Socialists/Communists/ Welsh nationalists and of course Scottish nationalists and The Poeple’s party of Tooting.
It should be easy but as usual in British politics it is based on missing the point.
Reform and the Tories should be viewed as mortal enemies no matter what our political differences now.
For the simple reason is that if reform win we will not be allowed to discuss anything.
Reform is the road to proper ( not ersatz ) Naziism.
Farage doesn’t know it because he knows no history, but the people that will replace him later will know it.
The British Left has a history of nobbling itself due to alleged principle and this is not the time to dwell on left
stances and purity.
There is a job to be done and that job is to stop Reform and the Tories from governing Britain.
Every thing else is secondary to that task.
We can all have a robust debate later as to what to do next once we have nobbled Reform and the Tories.
If we don’t nobble Reform and the Tories we will not be allowed to debate anything.
If you are Leftie you should know that in your bones.
If you can persuade the public that you have something worth voting for then you don’t have to get involved in dirty tricks and nobble anyone. If you can’t do that you’re not worth anyone’s vote.
Stevie Boy
Politics is dirty filthy game.
Many wars are fought over it once negotiations ( politer politics) fail.
This is a very dangerous era to be alive.
It is not a time to be polite.
There is no con if you are sincere.
There is if you are not.
The not polite have been in charge for a very long time.
Reform will be less polite than them.
Trump is Farage’s role model and he’s very polite as we know.
After May’s elections, next year, if current political polling trends remain – think Caerphilly on a larger scale – Starmer and Badenoch may well both be standing down. Who’ll replace Starmer is uncertain, as there is no easy entry route into the HoC for Burnham, short of someone in his home town steps down to make way for him. As for the Tories, Jenrick will likely take over. He’s more sympathetic to Reform than Badenoch, and imho, he will seek to merge the two parties. So, all this talk of how Reform are going to shake the UK political scene up could prove to be another false dawn, as the ‘Conservative & Reform party’ is born with Farage retaining the leadership as part of any deal. Reform will see such a move as attractive because if gives them 100+ MPs instantly.
The establishment can be ruthless when it comes to defending the two-party system, and they were quite happy as the Conservative and Unionist party when Theresa May was left dependent on the DUP’s MPs after the 2017 shock result in which Corbyn deprived them of a majority
Badenoch will almost certainly leave office shortly after May if she even makes it as far as the local elections. She has nothing to stand on, and she won’t find anything either. The way she responded to Sarah Pochin’s racism by dodging the question and saying oh she is always being asked as a black woman whether she thinks something is racist or not, and all she will say is that it was disgraceful, was excruciating. The journalist should have said, “You’re supposed to be the f*cking Leader of the Opposition – how about you answer in that role?”
Labour still has some safe seats (for the moment) but the choreography of getting Burnham into No.10 is difficult. He can’t exactly run for a seat without everyone reading his action as a challenge to Starmer – and if he openly says “Yeah, that’s right”, he’s unlikely to win a leadership election – and if Starmer resigns then Burnham couldn’t run straightaway, nor could there realistically be a caretaker until he sorted his act out, not if the idea was to keep Labour above 10% of voteshare in the polls.
Jenrick could take over the Tories and start showing some true leadership … of the knuckledragging white racist upsurge that Musk and Bannon and Trump and Yaxley-Lennon are all whipping up. Pay for a few scandals…a few Reform-to-Tory “defections”… Or re-defections. Start with Lee Anderthal maybe. Just a scenario.
Military installations are about to house “asylum seekers”. A lot could change fast. I hope there is some burning digital ID in the street at least somewhere.
“‘Conservative & Reform party’ is born with Farage retaining the leadership as part of any deal”
Well, from a Scottish independence point of view, that’s better than the “Conservative and Unionist Party”, the Blue Tories’ current official title.
Identical pitch to that made by the Genocide Democrats last year.
Wasn’t enough to get the Democratic base out on election day, and the Savile-Epstein party is even more repellant to its former voting base.