Seumas Milne's Blog, page 3
June 24, 2015
By scapegoating Muslims, Cameron fuels radicalisation | Seumas Milne
Ministers foster terror with their wars. Now they attack liberties at home in the name of British values
The anti-Muslim drumbeat has become deafening across the western world. As images of atrocities by the jihadi terror group Isis multiply online, and a steady trickle of young Europeans and North Americans head to Syria and Iraq to join them, Muslim communities are under siege. Last week David Cameron accused British Muslims of “quietly condoning” the ideology that drives Isis sectarian brutality, normalising hatred of “British values”, and blaming the authorities for the “radicalisation” of those who go to fight for it.
It was too much for Sayeeda Warsi, the former Conservative party chair, who condemned the prime minister’s “misguided emphasis” on “Muslim community complicity”. He risked “further alienating” the large majority of Muslims fighting the influence of such groups, she warned. Even Charles Farr, the hawkish counter-terrorism mandarin at the Home Office, balked. Perhaps fewer than 100 Britons were currently fighting with Isis, he said, and “we risk labelling Muslim communities as somehow intrinsically extremist”.
Related: Remember, prime minister: British Muslims hate Isis too | Sayeeda Warsi
Add in media hostility, Islamophobia and state surveillance of Muslim communities, and alienation can only spread
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June 17, 2015
There’s no reason to accept austerity. It can be defeated | Seumas Milne
It would hardly be surprising if the large majority of British people who didn’t vote for the Conservatives were daunted at the prospect of what’s now in store for us. David Cameron and George Osborne can hardly contain their enthusiasm for the torrent of cuts and privatisations they are about to unleash.
Related: My challenge to Labour: embrace a progressive, multiparty politics | Caroline Lucas
Corbyn's candidacy should halt the other candidates’ stampede to the right. He's likely to do better than pundits think
Continue reading...June 10, 2015
The case for radical change in Europe can’t be left to the nationalist right | Seumas Milne
For the true face of the European Union, look no further than the war now being waged on Greece by its troika of euro creditors. No people have suffered more from the eurozone crisis than the Greeks. The victim of rapacious European banks, a corrupt elite, and a half-baked, lopsided currency union, Greece has paid a pulverising price for the financial crash and eurozone meltdown.
Related: Tsipras meets Merkel amid talk of compromise - live updates
EU treaties enforcing privatisation and corporate privilege would be a serious obstacle to progressive change in Britain
Continue reading...June 3, 2015
Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq | Seumas Milne
The sectarian terror group won’t be defeated by the western states that incubated it in the first place
The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.
The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead withthe trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.
American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria
Continue reading...May 20, 2015
This New Labour revival could end with a party split | Seumas Milne
British politics is being reshaped across the spectrum, and it’s not a pretty sight. You might have imagined, after David Cameron’s election victory, that Labour would use its leadership contest for a genuine debate about how to regain power. After all, the result was as complex as it was unexpected. The Tory 12-seat majority, won on less than 37% of the vote, was nothing like the landslide portrayed. Labour haemorrhaged votes on its left to the SNP and Greens, and on the populist right to Ukip, but won more votes in England than Tony Blair did in 2005.
It failed in small-town England but advanced in London and big cities. It continued to lose working-class votes but bolstered its middle-class support. How to weave together a winning electoral coalition out of such fragmentation is far from straightforward. But you’d never know that from the response of Labour’s leadership candidates. Taking their cue from Blair and a string of former New Labour luminaries, all have fallen in – with more or less enthusiasm – behind a Blairite agenda.
Related: Tristram Hunt withdraws from Labour leadership race
Labour’s leadership campaign has been led by a Blairite agenda which doesn’t reflect public, let alone Labour, opinion
Related: Ex-No 10 guru Steve Hilton provides David Cameron with food for thought
Continue reading...May 13, 2015
The return of the Blairites is the last thing Labour needs
The idea that New Labour politics would win back voters from the SNP, Greens or Ukip is delusional
We can’t say we weren’t warned. David Cameron has lost no time since the election in turning his government sharply to the right. Under the banner of “blue collar Conservatism”, the Thatcherites and neocons have been let off the leash.
New strike ballot voting thresholds of 40% will make most industrial action illegal – this from a government backed by less than 25% of the electorate. New restrictions on freedom of speech are being lined up in the name of British values. After a pre-election austerity pause, prepare for the most savage benefit and spending cuts yet – and what one Tory minister has promised will be a “flood of privatisation”.
Related: Cameron's blue-collar cabinet causes limo-lock on Downing Street
While Labour’s middle-class vote held up, the historic loss of 4 million working-class voters continued
Continue reading...May 6, 2015
The Tories are plotting a coup in the name of legitimacy | Seumas Milne
Every anti-democratic lever will be pulled to block a Miliband government. Labour has to turn the tables
It’s possible that the Tories may yet pull it off, as their Australian alchemist, Lynton Crosby, has always promised. The main parties may still be almost neck and neck. But undecided voters could break to the Conservatives. Soft Ukip supporters could finally deliver David Cameron the votes he needs to stay in Downing Street.
If so, we know what to expect. With or without Nick Clegg, it will mean even deeper austerity, harsher cuts to social security, accelerating NHS privatisation, more attacks on workers’ rights, new handouts to the wealthy, more poverty and job insecurity, and perhaps another downturn in the slowest economic recovery on record.
Continue reading...April 29, 2015
The big lie of economic success may still not save the Tories | Seumas Milne
The warning couldn’t have been more timely. When all else is failing, David Cameron and George Osborne have always banked on the economy to see them through. We can expect to hear of little else for the next week. “The long-term plan is working,” they insist; don’t let Labour ruin it. Boris Johnson, the man waiting to take Cameron’s job, even claimed last weekend that “the economy is going gangbusters”.
Presumably he was relying on the fact that even if it’s scarcely booming, the British economy has at least been growing after years of slump and stagnation. But the signs are it’s all starting to fall apart again. Quarterly growth has now been revealed to have halved to 0.3% in the first three months of the year. Production is down, construction is down.
Related: Coalition has presided over plunge in living standards, says TUC
Clegg has made absolutely clear his preference for another coalition with the Tories
Continue reading...April 28, 2015
Ken Livingstone wins fight for Brent East nomination: from the archive, 29 April 1985
The Greater London Council leader beat off three other candidates to win by 50 votes to 25 in the second ballot against a black Westminster councillor, Miss Diane Abbott
Mr Ken Livingstone yesterday won his three-year battle to become Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate in the north-west London constituency of Brent East.
The Greater London Council leader beat off three other candidates in the selection meeting to win by 50 votes to 25 in the second ballot against a black Westminster councillor, Miss Diane Abbott.
Continue reading...April 22, 2015
Playing the anti-Scotland card is Cameron’s desperate last resort | Seumas Milne
So now we know the last Tory trick in their book. They’ve tried all the standard pre-election routines. We’ve had promises of tax cuts, naturally. They’ve offered a discounted right to buy on housing association homes they don’t own. The party of austerity has sprayed around spending pledges, while ridiculing Labour as incompetent spendthrifts. A cabal of City-funded multimillionaires has tried to paint themselves as the “party of working people”. They’ve claimed to be presiding over a great economic revival.
But the numbers won’t budge. They dismissed Ed Miliband as hopeless, but his ratings are climbing.
Related: Miliband vulnerable to SNP 'blackmail', warns John Major
Cameron wants to make austerity permanent. The only alternative is a Miliband government
Related: Does the Conservative and Unionist party secretly want to break up the UK? | Letters
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