Seumas Milne's Blog, page 2
August 27, 2015
Politics Weekly podcast: China's slowdown, Corbynomics resurgence, and the House of Lord expansion
August 26, 2015
China can ride out this crisis. But we’re on course for another crash | Seumas Milne
It may not yet be the moment to get in supplies of tinned food. That was what Gordon Brown’s former adviser during the 2008 crash, Damian McBride, suggested on Monday as stock markets crashed from Shanghai to New York and $1tn was wiped off the value of shares in one day. But seven years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers brought down the global financial system and plunged half the world into a slump, it’s scarcely alarmist to see the financial panic as the harbinger of a new crisis in a still crippled world economy.
The market gyrations that followed “Black Monday” this week and the 40% drop in the value of Chinese stocks since June have only underlined the fragility of what is supposed to be an international recovery. For all the finger-wagging hubris of western commentators over the fact that the latest mayhem has erupted in China, this is a global firestorm. And after three decades of deregulation punctuated by financial crises and a systemic meltdown, there is every reason to fear more fallout from casino capitalism.
Related: China 2015: beware the links with 1929
There is every reason to fear more fallout from casino capitalism
Continue reading...August 21, 2015
Is Labour electable under Jeremy Corbyn? – video
Columnists Rafael Behr and Seumas Milne disagree on the consequences of a Corbyn leadership victory – will he offer disenchanted voters a welcome alternative to moribund New Labour policies or is this a disastrous reaction to an election where the electorate seemed to feel safer with the Tories? Can 400,000 new signups for Labour be transformed into the millions needed to win a general election?
Continue reading...August 20, 2015
Jeremy Corbyn’s surge can be at the heart of a winning coalition | Seumas Milne
A democratic eruption is transforming Labour. If it continues, it can change the electoral landscape too
What is taking place in the Labour party is a democratic explosion unprecedented in British political history. Last week more than 168,000 registered to vote in Labour’s leadership election – on one day. About 400,000 people have applied to join Labour as members or supporters since May, tripling the size of the party to more than 600,000.
Overwhelmingly, it’s the response to one candidate standing for the Labour leadership: the veteran backbench campaigner Jeremy Corbyn. When Tony Blair became Labour leader in 1994 he promised to recruit 1 million members, but never got much beyond 400,000. Corbyn has sailed past him in weeks.
Related: Jeremy Corbyn is most popular among voters from all parties, poll suggests
As each denunciation has failed to dent Corbyn’s lead, they have become more poisonous
Continue reading...August 19, 2015
Corbyn’s surge can be at the heart of a winning coalition | Seumas Milne
A democratic eruption is transforming Labour. If it continues, it can change the electoral landscape too
What is taking place in the Labour party is a democratic explosion unprecedented in British political history. Last week more than 168,000 registered to vote in Labour’s leadership election – on one day. About 400,000 people have applied to join Labour as members or supporters since May, tripling the size of the party to more than 600,000.
Overwhelmingly, it’s the response to one candidate standing for the Labour leadership: the veteran backbench campaigner Jeremy Corbyn. When Tony Blair became Labour leader in 1994 he promised to recruit 1 million members, but never got much beyond 400,000. Corbyn has sailed past him in weeks.
Related: Jeremy Corbyn is most popular among voters from all parties, poll suggests
As each denunciation has failed to dent Corbyn’s lead, they have become more poisonous
Continue reading...August 12, 2015
It’s not migrants who are the marauders and plunderers | Seumas Milne
Britain has no refugee crisis and Europe’s can be managed. But western wars have driven it
Never let it be said that Britain’s leaders miss an opportunity to inflame fear and loathing towards migrants and refugees. First David Cameron warned of the threat posed by “a swarm of people” who were “coming across the Mediterranean … wanting to come to Britain”. Then his foreign secretary Philip Hammond upped the ante.
The chaos at the Channel tunnel in Calais, he declared, was caused by “marauding” migrants who posed an existential threat. Cheer-led by the conservative press, he warned that Europe would not be able to “protect itself and preserve its standard of living” if it had to “absorb millions of migrants from Africa”.
Related: The truth about the people and numbers in loud and furious migration debate
Related: Lithuanian migrants trafficked to UK egg farms sue 'worst gangmaster ever'
Continue reading...August 5, 2015
Win or lose, Jeremy Corbyn has already changed the rules of the game | Seumas Milne
The media and the political class can hardly contain themselves. What’s happening in the Labour party should simply not be happening. It’s suicidal, puerile, madness, self-mutilation, narcissistic, an emotional spasm and, in the words of one Tory cabinet member, a “potential catastrophe for Britain”.
But Jeremy Corbyn’s runaway leadership campaign shows little sign of flagging. In fact, the more he’s attacked and derided, the more support he attracts. It’s an extraordinary example of how utterly unpredictable politics can be. In the aftermath of the general election, Corbyn’s name was barely mentioned as a possible candidate, as Labour’s leaders lurched to the right.
He may not be able to match Podemos’s Pablo Iglesias for charisma, but he’s transparently honest and unspun
Related: Why Labour should end the madness and elect Yvette Cooper | Alan Johnson
Continue reading...July 16, 2015
The crucifixion of Greece is killing the European project | Seumas Milne
You couldn’t have had a clearer demonstration of what democracy now counts for in Europe than this week’s immolation of Greece. In January, after five years of grinding austerity imposed by the troika of creditors had shrunk its economy by a quarter and pushed millions into poverty, Greeks rebelled and elected an anti-austerity government.
Following months of fruitless negotiations, the country voted last week to reject the latest cuts, tax rises and privatisations demanded to deal with the disastrous impact of the first phase of austerity. The response of the eurozone’s masters was immediately to ratchet up the pain still further. For the “breach of trust” of daring to put the terms to its people, Athens was to be punished. So on Monday – threatened with expulsion from the eurozone and economic collapse courtesy of the European Central Bank’s cash blockade – the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, bent the knee.
Related: The left must now campaign to leave the EU | Owen Jones
What kind of a union treats one of its members like a recalcitrant colony and dismisses its democracy as an affront?
Related: British progressives and the European Union: should we stay or should we go? | Letters
Continue reading...July 8, 2015
Osborne’s class spite wrapped in spin will feed a backlash | Seumas Milne
It’s a long-established Tory tradition to play their most outrageous cards as soon as possible after winning an election: impose the most savage cuts and stuff the pockets of their friends without restraint. Margaret Thatcher could barely contain herself in 1979, abolishing exchange controls and cutting the top rate of tax for the wealthiest from 83% to 60% a month after coming to power. Her chancellor, Nigel Lawson, hacked it back again to 40% in his first post-election budget in 1988, fuelling boom and bust in the process. And George Osborne unveiled his calamitous programme of cuts, tax breaks for the rich and tax rises for the poor the month after the 2010 election.
That halted economic recovery and eventually had him booed out of the Olympic stadium. It was only by calling a temporary halt to austerity and pumping up the housing market that he was able to rescue his reputation and lay the ground for the upturn that saved his and David Cameron’s bacon last month.
Continue reading...July 1, 2015
Syriza can’t just cave in. Europe’s elites want regime change in Greece | Seumas Milne
Greece’s confrontation with the euro overlords will shape resistance to austerity – and the future of the whole European Union
It’s now clear that Germany and Europe’s powers that be don’t just want the Greek government to bend the knee. They want regime change. Not by military force, of course – this operation is being directed from Berlin and Brussels, rather than Washington.
But that the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the troika of Greece’s European and International Monetary Fund creditors are out to remove the elected government in Athens now seems beyond serious doubt. Everything they have done in recent weeks in relation to the leftist Syriza administraton, elected to turn the tide of austerity, appears designed to divide or discredit Alexis Tsipras’s government.
Related: We're not traitors, insist Greece's yes campaigners
Syriza's' achilles heel has been its commitment to ending austerity while remaining in the euro
Continue reading...Seumas Milne's Blog
- Seumas Milne's profile
- 14 followers
