Daily Archives: October 10, 2019

Welcome to the inaugural The Outdoor Narrative column, which will run every two weeks in the pages of KTW and online at kamloopsthisweek.com. The Outdoor Narrative, which is also a podcast, is the work of Robert Koopmans, an angler and hunter and former editor of the Kamloops Daily News.

If there is one question Id like answered in the continuing saga of the demise of the Thompson River steelhead, its this: why are we still calculating the costs of saving endangered species?

The outlook for the Fraser Interior steelhead, which includes both the Thompson and Chilcotin river runs, is grim. Ten years ago, biologists said at least 900 fish needed to make it to spawning beds in the Deadman, Nicola and Bonaparte rivers for the Thompson strain to continue. In 2018, only 177 spawning adults and just 37 fish were counted in the Chilcotin River system.

There is much speculation about the reasons for the fishs decline, but reports from various government groups, committees, bodies and agencies (the decline of steelhead has been well considered, at the least) indicate three likely causes.

They are deteriorating freshwater habitat, poor ocean survival and losses to coastal commercial fisheries as unintended by-catch.

The threat to steelhead is so dire that the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada issued an emergency report in February 2018, noting the runs have declined more than 80 per cent in three generations.

The fish are clearly endangered, the report stated, with immediate action required.

It was an open invitation for the federal government to list Fraser River steelhead as a species at risk under Canadas Species at Risk Act (SARA), legislation that would have kicked in numerous provisions designed to make survival of the species the highest priority.

From the government of Canadas website: The purposes of the Species at Risk Act are to prevent wildlife species in Canada from disappearing, to provide for the recovery of wildlife species that are extirpated (no longer exist in the wild in Canada), endangered or threatened as a result of human activity, and to manage species of special concern to prevent them from becoming endangered or threatened.

Sounds tailor-made for the steelhead dilemma.

What happened?

In July, the federal government announced it would not list steelhead under SARA after considering a wide range of polycentric factors, including a cost-benefit analysis of the potential impacts of listing (steelhead).

What would have been those costs?

According to the same notes, the costs were estimated to range between $190 million to $254 million over 20 years, mostly in lost revenue and profits to harvesters, recreational anglers, Indigenous groups, the seafood industry and the recreational services industry.

Listing Chilcotin and Thompson River steelhead as endangered under SARA would result in significant and immediate negative socio-economic impacts on Canadians due to the application of (SARAs) general prohibitions, the governments statement on the decision indicated.

And there you have it.

To what extent the socio-economic factors weighed more heavily than other polycentric factors, we will likely never know.

But they are big numbers and I cant help but think those in high corridors in Ottawa did some political math there would have been a tremendous hue and cry had West Coast commercial fishing seasons been dramatically affected and decided the cost of saving 50 steelhead a year accidentally caught by gillnets wasnt worth it.

Such calculations are incredibly short-sighted. Weve heard the same socio-economic concerns expressed and seen the same calculations made many times in other places, including Canadas East Coast with Atlantic cod.

There, long-term resistance to constraining commercial fisheries led to the collapse of cod stocks and the fishing industry.

The fact is, people are incredibly resilient when it comes to adapting to changing economic circumstances.

The Atlantic commercial fishing industry collapsed and fishermen moved on. There are no businesses in Spences Bridge today catering to anglers.

The town is still there.

We have survived countless periods of economic adjustment.

No doubt there are individual hardships when regional industries are affected, but history shows people are remarkably adept at surviving job loss and displacement.

Steelhead are not so adept at dodging commercial fishing nets.

Is it too late for steelhead? Probably.

The federal governments refusal to do all it can to protect the few remaining fish likely sounds their death knell, despite Ottawas promise to implement immediate conservation measures.

What can we learn?

If nothing else, perhaps that calculating short-term costs in relation to saving endangered species is embarrassingly selfish and will be judged as such by future generations. Economic pain is temporary. Extinction of species is permanent.

Canada is a rich country with a deep natural heritage and Canadians are resilient people with proven ability to survive socio-economic impacts.

Lets act like it.

To leave a comment, go online to theoutdoornarrative.com.

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The Outdoor Narrative: Ottawa's decision on steelhead is shortsighted - Kamloops This Week

It is almost certain that Law and Justice will emerge from Polands parliamentary election this Sunday as the largest grouping, but far from clear if it will retain its overall majority, writes Aleks Szczerbiak. If the governing party secures a second term, it will entrench and push ahead with its reform programme, while any alternative coalition government is likely to be weak and unstable.

On 13 October, Poland will hold a parliamentary election which is likely to be one of the most important and consequential since the collapse of communism in 1989. During the last four years, the current government, led by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, has come under heavy fire from its political opponents for allegedly undermining democracy and the rule of law in its approach to the judiciary, media, public appointments and civic rights. It has also been in an ongoing conflict with the EU political establishment and subject to intense criticism from much of the western opinion-forming media.

However, Law and Justice remains very popular and enjoys a clear lead in the opinion polls. The Ewybory website that aggregates voting intention surveys shows the party averaging 44% compared with 26% for the Civic Coalition (KO) electoral alliance led by the liberal-centrist Civic Platform (PO), the countrys governing party between 2007-15 and currently the main opposition grouping.

Law and Justice remains popular in spite of the harsh criticisms that it has received because it is trusted by voters on the socio-economic issues that have dominated the election campaign. The party has delivered on most of the high-profile social spending promises which were the key to its 2015 election victory, the most significant of which was its extremely popular flagship 500 plus child benefit programme.

The 500 plus programme has had an important symbolic effect, providing a significant and clearly identifiable financial boost to many low-income households who felt frustrated that they had not shared sufficiently in Polands post-communist economic transformation. At the same time, although its opponents argue that the huge expansion of social spending and tax cuts places a massive strain on public finances, the government has continued to maintain high levels of economic growth and falling unemployment, with increased tax revenues actually leading to a reduction in the state budget deficit.

In its election programme, Law and Justice augmented its array of social welfare commitments and promised to build a Polish version of a prosperous state (pastwo dobrobytu) grounded in social solidarity and state-led economic modernisation. The centre-piece was a pledge to almost double the minimum wage by the end of 2023. These social welfare programmes and pledges are aimed at raising the electoral stakes for the partys core supporters, thereby encouraging them to turn out and vote out of fear that the liberal-centrist opposition may water them down or abandon them if it were to win office.

Credit for re-distributing prestige

Law and Justice has robustly denied the oppositions allegations that it undermined democracy and the rule of law, and many Poles accept the governments argument that its actions were necessary to restore pluralism and balance to institutions which, they said, had been expropriated by extremely well-entrenched, and often deeply corrupt, post-communist elites. But even if they have misgivings about some of the governments specific measures, particularly its approach to constitutional issues and civic rights, many still feel that, for all its faults, Law and Justice deserves credit for at least trying to tackle some of the apparently intractable problems with, and shortcomings of, the state which were ignored by previous administrations.

An important element of this that was linked to, but went beyond, the simple question of financial transfers is what some commentators termed the re-distribution of prestige. Many ordinary Poles who previously felt themselves to be second-class citizens started to regain a feeling of dignity and that, as they saw it, their government finally cared about the less well-off and was trying to restore an elementary sense of justice and moral order.

Although there has been negative publicity surrounding various allegations of abuse of public office by Law and Justice politicians, these do not appear to have damaged the governing party to any great extent. The party has generally been quick off-the-mark in acting decisively to neutralise these scandals, if necessary by dismissing the implicated officials. For example, in July Marek Kuchciski was forced to resign as Law and Justice parliamentary speaker following allegations that he had used an official aeroplane for private flights. The partys supporters appear to regard such allegations as either false, the occasional lapses of a generally honest party, or as endemic to Polish politics with Law and Justice at least attempting to ensure that it was not only the governing elites that shared in the fruits of the economic transition.

Law and Justice has also skilfully mobilised support around a number of moral-cultural issues where it enjoys widespread public support or that are important to its core electorate. In this campaign, for example, it has opposed what it calls LGBT ideology, putting itself at the head of a moral crusade as the defender of the traditional family, Polish national identity, and Christian values and culture. These, it argues, stabilise the social order and promote the common good but are threatened by a great offensive of evil (wielka ofensywa za). By focusing on these issues, and thereby strengthening its hold over conservative voters, Law and Justice has also neutralised the electoral challenge from the radical right Confederation (Konfederacja) grouping which, according to Ewybory, is averaging around 4% support (just under the 5% parliamentary representation threshold for individual parties).

An unconvincing opposition

The opposition should not be written off and retains considerable political assets. The overall levels of popular support for the government and opposition camps is actually fairly evenly balanced and the latter has substantial financial resources and the backing of most of the privately-owned media, as well as significant influence within, and widespread support from, the countrys cultural, legal and business elites. However, it has failed to develop a convincing and attractive programmatic alternative on the socio-economic issues that Polish voters care most about.

The opposition also lacks a convincing figurehead around whom it can rally. Civic Platform leader Grzegorz Schetyna is extremely effective as a behind-the-scenes political operator but lacks dynamism and charisma and is currently Polands least trusted politician. Recognising his lack of wider appeal, at the beginning of September Civic Platform proposed the more emollient former parliamentary speaker Magorzata Kidawa-Boska as its prime ministerial candidate. In doing so, it copied a Law and Justice manoeuvre in the 2015 campaign when its polarising leader Jarosaw Kaczyski nominated one of his deputies, Beata Szydo, as the partys nominee for prime minister. However, although the move helped to neutralise one of Civic Platforms most significant negatives, it has not had any discernible impact on the groupings poll ratings, coming too late to give Kidawa-Boska time to develop her profile as an authentic independent political figure.

Civic Platform strategists also recognised that, rather than trying to outbid Law and Justices huge expansion of individual social transfers and welfare benefit programmes (although it promised to continue with them), they should focus instead on improving the quality of public services, especially health care. However, while many Poles feel that these services have been neglected, they are also dubious as to whether the liberal-centrist opposition which is too associated with the previous, discredited Civic Platform administration offers a credible alternative. Law and Justice simply has much greater credibility on these social policy issues having implemented most of the spending promises on which it was elected.

More open than it seems

Nonetheless, although, as things currently stand, there is a strong possibility that Law and Justice will secure re-election for a second term, the election is more open than it initially appears. While it seems almost certain that Law and Justice will emerge as the largest party, it is far from clear if it will retain its overall majority and continue to govern without needing the support of other parties.

Law and Justice only secured such a majority in 2015 because an alliance of left-wing parties narrowly failed to cross the higher 8% representation threshold for electoral coalitions. This time the three main left-wing parties the communist successor Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), the radical left Together (Razem) grouping, and the liberal-left Spring (Wiosna) led by sexual minorities campaigner Robert Biedro are contesting the election as a united slate. However, although they are badging their formation in a broader way as the Left (Lewica), in order to avoid the higher threshold the three parties are standing candidates on the Democratic Left Alliances electoral list; which is currently polling around 12% according to Ewybory.

The agrarian-centrist Polish Peasant Party (PSL), formerly Civic Platforms governing coalition partner, is also contesting the election independently but badging itself as a broader centrist Polish Coalition(KP) and has persuaded right-wing rock star Pawel Kukiz to join its ranks. Kukiz achieved a sensational result in the May 2015 presidential election winning one-fifth of the vote and, on the back of this, his Kukiz15 grouping emerged as the third largest in the new parliament but he lost much of his appeal as an anti-system campaigner when he teamed up with the quintessentially establishment Peasant Party; which, according to Ewybory, is currently polling around 6%.

Whether or not Law and Justice secures a parliamentary majority depends on the overall size and distribution of the ruling party and opposition groupings votes, particularly how many of the latter enter parliament and how many votes are cast for parties that fail to cross the representation threshold. The Polish electoral system, proportional representation with the dHondt method used for allocating seats, favours larger groupings particularly when a significant number of votes are cast for those that do not cross the electoral threshold. However, if Law and Justice loses a few percentage points and all the opposition groupings comfortably cross the threshold, then this could deprive the ruling party of its majority. The greatest threat to Law and Justice, therefore, comes from the danger of its own supporters succumbing to complacency and over-confidence that the election is a foregone conclusion.

The stakes are high

If Law and Justice wins it will entrench and continue to push ahead with its radical reform programme in areas such as the judiciary and probably broaden it out into other fields such as the privately-owned media. At the same time, and perhaps even more importantly, a Law and Justice second term will further shake-up the more informal hierarchies of power, influence and prestige that currently exist in the public sphere. With a fresh electoral mandate, the party will also be emboldened in its dealings with the EU political establishment and major European powers. As a consequence, a number of the partys more pragmatic domestic and international opponents are likely to seek some kind of accommodation if it appears that Law and Justice will be in office for another four years

Even if the opposition is able to deprive Law and Justice of an overall majority, and the latter is not able to peel off enough individual opposition deputies to compensate for this, any alternative coalition government will be weak and unstable. For sure, it is likely to try and roll back many of Law and Justices controversial reforms and engage in wholesale replacement of the partys nominees to key posts in public administration and broadcasting, the diplomatic service and state-controlled companies and agencies. But it will have to rely on an eclectic coalition of political forces for its parliamentary majority and its legislative programme will be undermined by the fact that it will also almost certainly lack the three-fifths majority required to overturn vetoes by Law and Justice President Andrzej Duda, whose term of office lasts until summer 2020.

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Note: This article originally appeared at Aleks Szczerbiakspersonal blog. The article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics.

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About the author

Aleks SzczerbiakUniversity of SussexAleks Szczerbiak is Professor of Politics and Contemporary European Studies at the University of Sussex. He is author ofPoland Within the European Union? New Awkward Partner or New Heart of Europe?(Routledge, 2012) and Politicising the Communist Past: The Politics of Truth Revelation in Post-Communist Poland (Routledge 2018). He blogs regularly about developments on the Polish political scene athttp://polishpoliticsblog.wordpress.com/

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Who will win the Polish election? | EUROPP - EUROPP - European Politics and Policy

In New York, they doused the Wall Street bull with fake blood. In Toronto, they occupied a major viaduct. Self-described rebels barricaded themselves into a Paris shopping mall and blocked the Westminster Bridge in London. The goal of these acts of civil disobedience? To recruit hundreds of thousands of peopleif not millionsinto the climate movement.

Mondays events marked the beginning of a week of action from the Extinction Rebellion (XR) activist group, which urged its members and supporters to get arrested by staging flashy protests that interfere with the day-to-day functioning of dozens of cities around the world.

The groups strategy hinges on a critical figure: mobilizing 3.5 percent of the population in a given country, which has been repeatedly proven to be a threshold for systemic political change. In this case, members of XR want governments to accede to a key demand: creating a citizens assembly that accelerates society away from climate-destroying industries and towards a net-zero emissions economy by 2025, five years earlier even than the ambitious 2030 target at the center of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs Green New Deal.

That citizens assembly can make the really hard decisions that we recognize politicians are not able to do, said Eve Mosher, a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion New York, dozens of whose members were reportedly arrested on Monday.

If enough countries begin enacting radical economic change like this, we could cross a global tipping point, Mosher said, where remaining nations rush to take part in the shift, drastically and immediately shrinking global greenhouse gas emissions and potentially pulling human civilization back from the brink of ecological collapse.

This probably sounds like wishful thinking to the extreme. But XRs strategy is drawn from serious academic research on nonviolent rebellionin particular, a 2011 book called Why Civil Resistance Works by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, which analyzes nonviolent conflicts from 1900 to 2006 and concludes that overthrowing governments requires far fewer people and resources than you might assume. The revolution Mosher and other XR members envision is definitely unlikely, at least in todays political environment, but experts contacted by VICE said that it fits within a long and often effective tradition of social movement-driven change.

So what is Extinction Rebellion anyway?

The activist group was officially launched by several British academics in October 2018 and quickly grabbed attention by blocking five London bridges and effectively bringing the citys center to a standstillan act of civil disobedience for which 85 people were arrested.

Whereas some larger environmental groups work within institutions to create policy change, XR operates on the assumption that our institutions are corrupted by corporate interests and thus must be confronted by a mass movement of ordinary people if we are to have any hope of averting civilization-destabilizing levels of global heating. What you have to do is create a massive load of shit nonviolently, XRs co-founder Roger Hallam told VICE in July.

Despite several actions this summer in New York and Washington, D.C.including activists literally gluing themselves to Capitol Hill and scaling the New York Times buildingthe group hasnt really broken into the U.S. Were not as advanced in our movement building as the U.K., Mosher said. So while XR activists in London will be seeking specifically to shut down the government starting October 7, she said, their American counterparts will stage attention-grabbing actions like a die-in outside of the New York Stock Exchange, along with an Occupy-reminiscent Rebel Fest in Washington Square Park, that help make people aware of XR and potentially convince them to join.

Why you only need 3.5% of the population for a revolution

XRs rationale for why these actions matter strategically is directly inspired by Why Civil Resistance Works, a 2011 book that transformed the study of non-violent rebellion. After researching more than a centurys worth of conflicts, authors Chenoweth and Stephan concluded that peaceful campaigns are twice as likely to succeed as armed ones. Part of the reason for that is participationyou need to be in good physical shape and properly trained to fight violently, which limits numbers, whereas almost anyone can join a mass protest.

The larger the social movement, the greater the chance its members will have some kind of family or personal link to military leaders, media publishers, businesspeople, and other elites. When enough elites, along with masses of ordinary people, withdraw their support from the ruling regime, it can no longer function. In all the successful rebellions that Chenoweth and Stephan studied, including the student-led overthrow of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 or the millions of Filipinos who in 1986 caused the repressive Marcos regime to fold, this tipping point came when 3.5 percent of the population became actively mobilizedand many campaigns succeeded with less.

But there are some important qualifiers

First of all, getting 3.5 percent of Americans (or nearly 11 million people) out in the streets demanding radical climate action would be no simple feat. Its also really important to remember that if you get 3.5 percent of the population, or around that amount, who are publicly organizing, that movement may have majority support in the rest of the population, explained Hardy Merriman, president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, which helped support and fund Chenoweth and Stephans research. Its sort of the tip of the iceberg that can be seen rather than saying, well if we just get 3.5 percent support well win. I think that would be a misinterpretation.

And its not enough to simply get huge numbers for a single dayor weekof action, like what we saw in September for the Global Climate Strikes. Successful social movements require a steady escalation of events and actions. If, like, in the White House one morning the cleaning ladies decide to stop cleaning the toilets then there is a huge impact, explained Margherita Belgioioso, an assistant professor at the University of Kent who recently co-authored a paper with Chenoweth. The more people you have out there, the more you impose these sorts of coststhe more likely are the nonviolent campaigns to be successful.

Does it make sense for XR to apply these insights to climate change?

Though one of the top goals of XR New York is mobilising 3.5 percent of the population to achieve system change, the research behind this number comes from citizens overthrowing oppressive national governments, not a global fight to lower greenhouse gas emissions that doesnt necessarily have clear heroes and villains.

Sure the adversary is different [than fighting a dictator], sure the narrative is different, but the basic dynamics of civil resistance are the same, Merriman said. There is an obvious injustice being committed (leaders failing to address or fix the climate emergency) and the institutional means of remedying that injustice (getting Congress to pass legislation) are broken, so ordinary people are coming together to challenge the entire system. In some ways XR has it easier than previous nonviolent campaigns, he said, which have had to confront autocrats that are entrenched, that have the capacity for repression, the capacity to use violence, control of state media.

But XR is still going up against a state apparatus that disproportionately targets people of colora fact some observers argue that the group has yet to properly acknowledge. White people in XR, however, assume that if they are polite and reasonable, the government will listen to them and protect them, Tatiana Garavito and Nathan Thanki wrote for VICE last month. Racialized communities and marginalized people know better.

Mosher agreed its unreasonable to ask people already ill-treated by police, courts and the criminal justice system to voluntarily break the law starting on October 7, which is partly why XR New York is providing the option to mobilise lawfully in Washington Square Park: We want those who can, to take arrests, while recognizing that there are many who cannot, for a variety of reasons, whether its health, age, socio-economic situation, the color of their skin.

The important thing, she said, is getting enough people mobilised to challengeand potentially topplea political and economic system sending us all toward ecological collapse. Were sleepwalking into a catastrophe, she said. Part of what we want to do with XR is we want people to wake up, we want people to emotionally connect with whats coming, and to get angry and find the courage in that to stand up, and get our governments to respond.

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If 3.5% of the US Gets on Board With Climate Protesting, Change Will Happen - VICE

A 15-kilo tonne atom bomb fell on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Imagine four such bombs falling somewhere or the other on the earth every single second! That would work out to some 126 million bombs every year. How much heat would 126 million Hiroshima-type atom bombs generate? That much heat energy, caused by sunlight hitting the earth, is prevented from dissipating away into space every year because of the wall of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere, according to German climate scientist, Hans Schellnhuber. This has been happening for at least 30 years now.

Then how come we are still alive?

Thanks to the oceans. They have been absorbing 90 per cent of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases. Alongside, they have been forced to suck up more CO2 these days than they have been doing for millions of years. The oceans, holding 97 per cent of the planets waters, have been protecting us from us.

But even good samaritans have their limits. The oceans are buckling under the burden and, unless the burden is removed or at least reduced, will collapse leaving humankind unprotected.

This message has been known for some time. But last week, a Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, has generated more evidence for what is already known, and has underscored a sense of urgency for action. The report has been prepared by 104 scientists drawn from 36 countries and is based on 6,981 studies and 30,000 comments enough credentials to establish that it is beyond reproach.

As the name suggests, the report looked (again) at the impact of global warming on the oceans and the frozen parts of the earth the polar regions and high mountains. The message, even if not new, is not amusing.

As Ko Barrett, an American climate expert and a Co-Chair of IPCC, observes, it is clear that the result of human actions is impacting the farthest corners of the earth, highest mountains and deepest seas.

Global oceans have been warming unabated since 1970 and have swallowed energy equivalent of at least 4 billion atom bombs of Hiroshima strength. A damning data-point is that in the 20th century, the oceans rose by 15 cm; by 2100, they would have risen by 1.1 metres, which is a very disastrous number.

As the oceans get warmer, they are also expanding and hence global mean sea levels are rising. Adding to the thermal expansion of water is the fresh water bounty coming from thawing permafrost, both in the polar regions and mountain ice caps, which is also creating a fresh water-sea water imbalance (stratification), causing further damage. And because the oceans are ingesting CO2, they are becoming acidic, killing food and oxygen for marine life and bleaching corals.

On the mountains, as the upper regions become warmer, plant and animal species are migrating up the slope, causing further disturbance in the ecosystem.

You might ask: Who bothers what will happen in distant 2100? But climate is not waiting in a corner with a cosh in hand for 2100 to come the effects are already upon us. Just one of the many examples of this is a phenomenon called The Blob (not part of the IPCC special report.) The Blob is the name given to a heat-wave phenomenon it occurs in oceans too that happened between 2013 and 2017 over 10 million sq km of waters in the Pacific, when the surface warmed over 3 degrees C than usual, resulting in salmon spawn shrinking to a seventh of normal and bringing the crabbing industry of California to its knees. The Blob is coming back again in 2019 and will keep coming back.

And the pity is, it is too late to reverse climate change now. We may, though, slow it down and take protective measures against the inevitable consequences of the damage done.

While much of all this is already known, the special report updates the knowledge. But more importantly, the report assesses, for the first time in the history of IPCC, local and indigenous knowledge systems to understand and adapt to climate change, says Anjal Prakash, Coordinating Lead Author for the report and Associate Professor, Regional Water Studies, TERI School of Advanced Studies, New Delhi.

The impact of changes in oceans and cryosphere is significant for India, a country with 7,500 km of coastline and therefore more vulnerable. Some 560 million people live in the nine littoral states and two union territories in India, of whom around 177 million live in the coastal regions. Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Surat are severely threatened, the report says a warning to the local governments not to think of long-term projects along the coast.

Also, 10 major rivers originate in the Hindu Kush, Himalayas region, a region that has now come to be referred to as the third pole, and the basins of these 10 rivers are at risk. Major glaciers are melting, which are changing water regimes and changing weather patterns bring incessant rains, flooding downstream areas, says Prakash. We must understand that systems are interconnected, so we need greater co-operation amongst countries, he told BusinessLine.

Quoting another study, Prakash says that water consumption in the downstream areas of Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra basins is projected to go up by 24, 42 and 107 per cent respectively during the current century. Water gap will increase due to socio-economic development and population rise, flood events will be more frequent and heat waves will be on the rise, he says.

Now that things have gone too far, the only option is to adapt. The mantra for solution is adapt, adapt and adapt, says Prakash. This involves first recognising the problems and taking protective measures for climate events that will surely happen such as making sure you put up no infrastructure on the coast, build resilient buildings with helipads on top, and plan for organised evacuation when necessary.

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The oceans are set to boil - BusinessLine

The EU Parliament overwhelmingly passed a joint resolution which is paving the way to demonizing the progressive Left in an attempt to equate fascists to those who fought against them.

On September 19, nine members of the European Parliament, on behalf of the Renew Group (former Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, ALDE, now merged with Macrons Renaissance), made amotion for a resolution which wasadopted the same day by the European Parliament with the votes of the Peoples Party, the Social Democrats, the Liberals, the Greens and the Conservative Reformists. The foreword of this motion says that it aims to wind up the debate on the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe.The resolution stresses the importance of keeping the memories of the past alive, because there can be no reconciliation without remembrance, and reiterates its united stand against all totalitarian rule from whatever ideological background. And it calls on all EU Member States to commemorate 23 August as the European Day of Remembrance for the victims of totalitarian regimes.

This may all sound legit but its false premises and potentially dangerous outcomes might require a whole book to analyse. It can be summed up in one simple sentence: it is an attempt to equate fascists to those who fought against them.

Written in masterfully perfected language of European bureaucracy, it rewrites the past, the present, and the future of the continent. The how and why of the matter is key in understanding theTINA logic of a seemingly strange coalition of European establishment and the far-right.

The backbone of this resolution is historical revisionism, that we have been witnessing all over Europe (and beyond) for decades. Its main focus is the history of the Second World War and the postwar period. The upsurge of historical revisionism is particularly strong in former socialist countries where the justifiable condemnation of Soviet violent expansionism is used to stigmatise communism, as well as other socialist and leftist ideas, and rehabilitate collaborators of the Nazis in WW2. In these cases of whitewashing history, there are intentional omissions of crucial facts: for instance, that those who opposed Soviet invasions in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 were communists themselves, or that, in case of socialist Yugoslavia, it wasnt part of the Warsaw pact, to begin with.

The new EP resolution uses the abominable Hitler-Stalin or Molotov-Ribbentrop (their foreign ministers) non-aggression pact as its starting point, giving it a curious twist: it explicitly says that the pact paved the way for the outbreak of the Second World War.

Does that mean that what Hitler was doing until that point was just fine? Persecution of Jews, annexations of Austria and Czechoslovakia, atrocities of the Spanish Civil War, were all just minor incidents that in no waypaved the way to the outbreak of the war?

Like in every case of historical revisionism, important omissions follow statements based on half-truths, such as the omission of the Munich Agreement, signed by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, France and the United Kingdom, thatpaved the way to Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia, or the Anglo-German Declaration of non-aggression that immediately followed it; or the lack of support for the antifascists in Spanish civil war from western democracies the attempt at so-calledappeasement of Nazi Germany. The resolution does not say that the initial pact between Nazi Germany and Japan signed in 1936 (later joined by Italy, Spain and several Nazi and Japanese puppet-states) was named Anti-Comintern Pact, stating communism as the main enemy of fascist forces. None of these facts exempt the Soviet Union from the responsibility for the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.

But we do not see resolutions about the responsibility of liberal capitalism for the outbreak of WW2.

The other main point of the Resolution, related to and stemming from revisionism, is the insistence on the victims of totalitarian regimes, naming explicitly Stalinism and Nazism, but using Stalinism and communism interchangeably, like in the statement that the Nazi and communist regimes carried out mass murders, genocide and deportations and caused a loss of life and freedom in the 20th century on a scale unseen in human history. Equating racially-based genocides of the Nazi regimes with Stalins undeniable murders and mass incarcerations of political enemies is at least as problematic as ascribing Stalins crimes to communism. Equating ideology that has equality as its main goal with the one that advocates racial purity and genocide is logically untenable and hypocritical.

The only ideology, besides Nazi-fascism, that throughout the 19th and much of the 20th century used racism as a way to justify its crimes, was capitalism. Countless crimes mass murders, genocide, and deportations were committed, based on ideas of social Darwinism and inferiority of African, Asian, or Native American populations, all in the name of progress and gaining capital in the age of imperialism.

But its victims were (mostly) not European. Even today, the death toll of the battle for profit is rising every day, especially (but not exclusively) in Third World countries. Yet, there are no days or monuments commemorating victims of capitalism, even though the relation between the crime and the ideology is much easier to prove than that between Stalins crimes and communism.

Virtually no leftists be they communists, social-democrats, anarchists, democratic socialists or any other kind deny or whitewash the crimes of Stalinism, or take Stalins Soviet Union as their role model. So where does this need to condemn communism come from? One of the reasons is the renewed cold war against Putins Russia, reflected in the calling on Russian society to come to terms with its tragic past. Indeed, Putins administration has used invocations of Stalins times as the age of national strength, but never referring to communism. Stalin himself did not use the appeal of communism, but that of nationalist and imperialist sentiment, to mobilize the population for annexations of parts of Poland and the Baltic states. Regardless of its authoritarian regime and imperialist tendencies, todays Russia is by no means the power that presents such danger as Stalins Soviet Union once did. But it is a powerful tool for fear-mongering and protecting the status quo in Europe, as well as absolving extreme nationalist governments of Eastern European EU countries.

The other reason creeping in from the pages of the Resolution is concealing the deficiencies of the current EU and the ever-expanding inequality gap between the countries of the core and those of the periphery, particularly in Eastern Europe. It states that, after the end of WW2, some European countries were able to rebuild and embark on a process of reconciliation, while other European countries remained under dictatorships some under direct Soviet occupation or influence for half a century and continued to bedeprived of freedom, sovereignty, dignity, human rights and socio-economic development (my emphasis). This statement, aside from being a wrong and sweeping generalization, overlooks the fact that many of these countries, Russia included, went from being severely underdeveloped agricultural societies to industrialized countries with developed infrastructure and strong workers rights, not to mention a higher level of womens emancipation than most countries of the capitalist center. It also intentionally simplifies the causes of contemporary unequal development within the EU, omitting important facts, such as the history of predatory privatizations during the so-called post-socialist transition period, and the very structure of the Union that ensures the perpetuation of inequality.

On the other hand, equating Nazism and fascism with communism, while resounding the US presidents reflections on nice people on both sides during conflicts between racists and antifascists in Charlottesville in 2017, enables European establishment to delegitimise and discredit its only true and viable opponent the progressive Left.

The fact that this Resolution is a joint effort of the right-wing and neoliberal parties in the European Parliament shows that its declarations of concern over all forms of Holocaust denial, including the trivialization and minimisation of the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis and their collaborators, are just that. Rewriting the past of WW2, in which leftist antifascist movements, as well as the Soviet army, were the backbone of fight against Nazis all over Europe in Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, France means rewriting the future of Europe, in which only the progressive and internationalist radical agenda can overcome the horrific results of neoliberal policies and the upsurge of neofascist forces that those policies enabled.

The EP resolution on remembrance aims at maintaining the status quo that brought the continent and the planet on the verge of collapse. We have to fight it!

A touch of irony for the end. One of the most cynical, though often unnoticed facets of the resolution is its condemnation of totalitarian regimes, in the age of surveillance capitalism (term created by Shoshana Zuboff). Totalitarianism implies total control over all aspects of citizens lives, and both Hitler and Stalin could only have dreamt of the means that surveillance capitalism offers to states, as well as big businesses, to control the most intimate desires and actions of entire populations.

Milena Repaji is a historian and member of DSC Belgrade 1

Photo on top: Socialists demonstration on Mai 1, 1912 at Union Square, New York City

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New EU resolution: how anti-fascism and fascism became the same thing - DiEM25

According to legend, in the balmy days before the First World War the Times once carried the headline: Fog on Channel, Continent Isolated. Now the fog that pervades the Brexit process leaves Britain isolated. This issue of International Socialism appears before 31 October, when Britain is due to leave the European Union with or without a deal. There is no point in speculating about the outcome of the obscure struggle involving Boris Johnsons government, the opposition forces (including Tory rebels) that now have a majority in the House of Commons and the EU-27. But some things are nevertheless clear.

Inter-imperialist conflict

First of all, the dimension of inter-imperialist conflict between Britain and the leading Continental powers over Brexit is now very evident. This has been made explicit by the arch-European federalist and all-purpose bully Guy Verhofstadt, ex-prime minister of Belgium and now the European Parliaments Brexit Coordinator. He told the Liberal Democrat conference in mid-September: The world order of tomorrow is not a world order based on nation states or countries. Its a world order based on empires The world of tomorrow is a world of empires in which we Europeans and you British can only defend your interests, your way of life, by doing it together in a European framework and in the European Union. The implicationget with the European empire or perishis reminiscent of a remark by a leading figure in the administration of George W Bush (widely thought to be senior White House adviser Karl Rove) in 2002, at the high-point of neocon hubris before the invasion of Iraq: Were an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.

As this example shows, imperial power has to confront often highly recalcitrant realities not of its own making. Indeed, there was less swagger in Verhofstadts tone a few days later, when he said in the European Parliament: The European Parliament will never accept that the UK can have all the advantages of free trade, and not align with our ecological, health and social standards We will never accept Singapore by the North Sea. In other words, the EU-27 (in particular France, the Netherlands and other north European Member States) fear that Britain will use its break with the EU to adopt lower regulatory standards and undercut its firms.

One of the main thrusts of the Brexit negotiations has been efforts by Brussels to use its bargaining muscle to force Britain to remain what one commentator has described as a regulatory satellite of the EU. Johnson has intensified these worries by dropping Theresa Mays pledge to maintain a level playing field where Britain keeps the same regulatory standards as the EU. According to the Financial Times, Johnsons chief Europe adviser, David Frost, has called on EU negotiators to commit to a best in class free trade agreement whereby the UK would be free to set its own regulatory standards after Brexit. As the commentator Wolfgang Mnchau puts it:

What one has to understand about the EU is its obsession with regulatory competition. The old European Economic Community may already have had lofty political ambitions in the 1950s. But it was born as a producers cartel. The EU would surely feel threatened by a Singapore-style Brexit in which Britain diverges from the regulatory standards that govern the single market. Even if the European Commission were ready to agree a trade deal that would leave the UK with regulatory autonomy, it would never be approved by the parliaments of all EU member states. France would surely not ratify.

These preoccupations arent irrational. Contrary to the widespread Remain-inspired portrayals of a ruined nation, Britain remains a leading capitalist state. According to Tony Norfields Index of Power (which ranks states according to their GDP, foreign direct investment, transactions in their currency, banking assets and liabilities and military spending), Britain is number three, after the United States and China, and before Japan, France and Germany. These capabilities wont just evaporate after Brexit. In particular, a recent report by the Bank for International Settlements suggests that the hopes, notably by the French ruling class, that Brexit could be used to displace the City of Londons place as the pre-eminent global financial centre, are vain.

Since 2016, the year of the Brexit referendum, the Citys share of foreign exchange trading has risen from 37 to 43 percent (while its main rival, Wall Street, saw its share drop from 20 to 17 percent). Its share of trading in over-the-counter derivatives has gone up from 38 to 50 percent. London is the capital of capital and this report shows that despite challenging times, the fundamentals of the City remain strong, Catherine McGuinness, policy chair at the City of London Corporation, told the Financial Times.

Continental European politicians hypocritically blame Anglo-American finance for the 2007-8 crash (hypocritically because Continental banks, frequently operating through London, were highly active in blowing the bubble up). One of the EUs main successes has been to use the promise of access to the Single Market to force other states to adopt its regulatory regime. So, the prospect of a rogue Britain, the base of a City that seems to be going from strength to strength, acting as a Singapore by the North Sea is hardly attractive.

Mays Withdrawal Agreement sought to keep Britain alignedindeed to a significant degree subordinatedto the EU. In rejecting this, Johnson has little alternative but to follow what is in any case the instinct of the free-market Brexiteers and seek to draw closer to the US, which under Donald Trump has shown itself eager to undermine the EU. Brussels has played hardball in the Brexit negotiations in large part to prevent this happening (with the northern Irish backstop acting as a figleaf), but, in giving May so little, it has strengthened the hand of supporters of a hard Brexit, who now dominate the Johnson cabinet. Whatever the eventual form taken by Britains departure, these contradictions will continue to play out against the background of growing trade tensions between the EU and US, which have been exacerbated by a World Trade Organisation ruling allowing Washington to impose retaliatory tariffs on European goods because of Brusselss subsidies to Airbus.

Constitutional crisis

Secondly, the Brexit impasse has now produced a full-scale constitutional crisis. A few years ago I wrote: it looks as if constitutional issues will continue to act as the lightning conductor of British politics for the immediate future. Its always nice to be proved right, but I never imagined the prime ministers use of the royal prerogative power to prorogue Parliament (ie suspend its sitting) being struck down by the Supreme Court. Why has this happened? In part, the very process of leaving the EU of necessity raises major constitutional issuesfor example the 2016 Miller case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Parliamentary approval was necessary for the government to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and start the process of Britain leaving the EU.

But, more fundamentally, the crisis arises from the combination of three political realities: the tough negotiating position taken by the EU, the Tories losing their parliamentary majority in the 2017 election and hence the power of minoritiesthe hard Brexiteers and hard Remainersto block the kind of compromise solution attempted by May in the Withdrawal Agreement. The resulting paralysissignalled by the successive defeats May suffered in the House of Commonsrepresented the progressive and remarkably rapid breakdown of the modern British political system, whereby capital can rely on a strong executive controlled by the party that has a majority in the House of Commons.

This process has accelerated during the few weeks Johnson has occupied 10 Downing St. The parliamentary impasse allowed him to grab power, but the manner in which he has exercised it has made the constitutional crisis worse. He formed a cabinet dominated by hard Brexiteersa government representing a faction of the Tory Party to an extent unprecedented in British political history; Margaret Thatcher ran a tight ship but she tried to accommodate the different currents in her party with her cabinets; Tony Blair was more factional, but still managed to find a place for the soft left. Johnson has appointed a government that will leave him very little wiggle room on his pledge to leave the EU by 31 October.

The prospect of a no-deal Brexit freed the hard core of Remainers on the Tory back benches (including senior figures in Mays cabinet such as Philip Hammond) from any inhibitions they might have about rebelling and encouraged the opposition parties to start cooperating with them and with each other. Hence the succession of defeats for Johnson in the House of Commons. The row over his decision to prorogue Parliament for five crucial weeks in the run-up to 31 October symbolises the breakdown of constitutional norms. It also vindicates those, notably Tony Benn writing in 1982, who argued that the prime ministers exercise of the Queens prerogative powers deriving from common law rather than Act of Parliament, which has been traditionally interpreted as a matter of executive discretion, represent a dangerously undemocratic concentration of power.

We are seeing a collapse in the understandings of constitutional practice traditionally shared within the political elite and the ruling class more broadlythe famous conventions that form Britains unwritten constitution. The significance of the Supreme Court judgement of 24 September in the second Miller case, which struck down Johnsons prorogation of Parliament, is that the judges are now openly taking upon themselves the responsibility of interpreting and enforcing these conventions. The key passage in the judgement is all about constitutional principles, not the interpretation of precedent or statute:

The Government exists because it has the confidence of the House of Commons. It has no democratic legitimacy other than that. This means that it is accountable to the House of Commonsand indeed to the House of Lordsfor its actions The first question, therefore, is whether the Prime Ministers action had the effect of frustrating or preventing the constitutional role of Parliament in holding the Government to account The answer is that of course it did.

It was on this basis that the Supreme Court humiliated Johnson by striking down this action which had such an extreme effect upon the fundamentals of our democracy, drawing the stinging conclusion that his advice to the Queen to prorogue Parliament was unlawful

It was outside the powers of the Prime Minister to give it. This means that it was null and of no effect It led to the Order in Council [implementing the prorogation] which, being founded on unlawful advice, was likewise unlawful, null and of no effect and should be quashed. This led to the actual prorogation, which was as if the Commissioners had walked into Parliament with a blank piece of paper. It too was unlawful, null and of no effect.

Leaving aside for the moment the blow this represents to Johnson and his hard-Brexiteer allies, this judgement represents in effect the Supreme Court beginning to assume the role of a constitutional court that assesses the actions of state bodies and citizens in the light of its interpretation of constitutional principles. The US Supreme Court has been doing this for over two centuries, but on the basis of a written Constitution; the British Supreme Court is taking on this role in the absence of one. The breakdown of the constitutional consensus is likely to continuequite apart from the mess at Westminster, there is growing support for another independence referendum in Scotland.

It seems inevitable that there will be more judicial law-making. But, as the judges become more explicitly political in the judgements, what J A G Griffith calls the myth of neutrality that has been central to their ideological positioning and political legitimacy will dissolve. Already the decisions taken by the courts in the two Miller cases have been hotly contested by the Leave campremember the Daily Mail headline branding judges as Enemies of the People after the first case.

Moreover, although the effect of the judicial interventions to defend parliamentary sovereignty against executive discretion in the two Miller cases isnt problematic from a socialist perspective, that doesnt mean we should welcome the judges becoming the arbiters of the constitution. Griffiths description of their role, though dating back to the 1970s, retains its validity today:

Judges are concerned to preserve and to protect the existing order. This does not mean that no judges are capable of moving with the times, of adjusting to changed circumstances. But their function in our society is to do so belatedly. Law and order, the established distribution of power both public and private, the conventional and agreed view amongst those who exercise political and economic power, the fears and prejudices of the middle and upper classes, these are the forces that the judges are expected to uphold and do uphold.

His defeats in the House of Commons and at the Supreme Court meanwhile leave Johnson boxed in. The traditional way out for a prime minister in his position would be to dissolve Parliamentbut under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011, introduced by the David Cameron-Nick Clegg coalition, this now requires a two-thirds majority of the House of Commons, and his opponents have denied him this up to now. Hence his efforts to make a last-minute deal with Brussels.

But will the EU-27 do Johnson this favour? They may think it better to leave him to pick up the political tab for the economic disruption a no-deal Brexit may cause. The replacement for the backstop he unveiled in proposals announced on 2 October look unlikely to meet the demands of Brussels and Dublin. And could Johnson get the kind of deal the EU would give him through the Commons? But leaving the EU on 31 October without a deal will mean defying the Benn Act, the law named after its main author, Blairite MP Hilary Benn, which his opponents passed forbidding such an outcome. This would put the constitutional crisis on steroids.

Electoral fragmentation

Sooner or later, however, the contending forces in Parliament will test their support in a general election. Demanding that this happens as soon as possible is one of the few tools Johnson has left. He reacted aggressively to his humiliation by the Supreme Court, trying to frame the conflict as one between Parliament and the people. Behind this ploy lies the peculiar electoral arithmetic revealed in the European parliamentary elections in May (see Table 1). This is succinctly explained by David Runciman:

After the 2017 general election Britain looked like a 40:40:20 nation. The two main parties had more than four-fifths of the vote between them, fairly evenly divided, and the prize would go to whoever could peel off a few more of the rest, which included Lib Dems, Greens, nationalists, Ukippers and others. Just two years on, at least for the moment, Britain has become a 20:20:20:20:20 nation. Support for the two main parties has more or less halved after they each conspicuously failed to do what many of their 2017 supporters wantedeither failed to deliver Brexit or failed to stop it. Two other partiesthe Brexit Party and the Lib Demscurrently offer a home for anyone who thinks that either delivering Brexit or stopping it is the only thing that matters. So now the game has changed. The prize will go to whoever can turn their 20 back into anything resembling the vote share of two years ago. It doesnt have to be 4035, maybe even 30, will do, so long as they get it more quickly than the other side can manage.

The prolonged Brexit impasse has fragmented the electorate. In May, both the Tories and Labour found themselves running way behind Nigel Farages new Brexit Party, the Lib Dems and, in the Tories case, the Greens. By nailing the banner of hard Brexit to his mast, Johnson hopes to win back the Tory voters May lost to Farage and also failed to pick up some of the pro-Leave Labour voters she tried, largely unsuccessfully, to court in June 2017. Hence his efforts to secure an election date as close as possible to the 31 October departure day so that he can either pose as the hero who got Britain out of the EU or denounce Labour and its allies for blocking this outcome. A fragmented electorate can produce perverse results in the first past the post electoral system. It is on this basis that Johnsons supporters are predicting he could win a hundred-seat majority with what would probably be a historically low share of the popular vote.

Table 1: Results of European Parliamentary Elections, May 2019

Source: https://election-results.eu/national-results/united-kingdom/2019-2024/

Party

Share of vote (percentage)

Brexit Party

30.74

Lib Dems

19.75

Labour

13.72

Greens

11.76

Conservatives

8.84

SNP

3.50

Change UK

3.31

UKIP

3.21

Plaid Cymru

0.97

Behind this electoral calculus lies a larger plan to remake the British party system. How much this is Johnsons plan or that of his chief adviser, the political technologist Dominic Cummings, architect of the 2016 Leave referendum campaign, is secondary. But certainly Cummings expresses a genuinely populist hostility to the elitism of the British political system alongside various half-baked ideas about reforming the state. In any case the idea is that the Brexit crisis is polarising the electorate around attitudes towards Britain and the EU. According to this analysis, the choice of Leave or Remain, a secondary matter for most people at the time of the referendum, is becoming the basis of political identities. This is supported by research led by John Curtice, which found that voters are far more likely to declare a Brexit identity than they are to say that they have a party identity, and that this identification makes them more likely to vote and strongly affects their attitudes on the various issues thrown up by the struggle to leave the EU. So if the Tories capture the loyalty of the Leavers they can see off Farage and remake their political base.

The logic of this strategy is to begin to transform the Tories into something closer to a far-right party like the Lega in Italy or even the Alternative fr Deutschland (AfD) in Germany than mainstream centre-right parties such as the Christian Democrats under Angela Merkel (in fact the Continental centre right is itself moving rightwards in an effort to stave off the challenge from the far right: witness, for example, Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurzs on-off alliance with the fascist Freedom Party, or the rebranding of Les Rpublicains in France around Islamophobia and defence of traditional family values). Certainly some of the main things the Johnson government has donetrying to scrap free movement for EU citizens as soon as Britain leaves, purging pro-EU Tory rebels, including grandees such as Ken Clarke, playing fast and loose with the prerogative, scorning the Supreme Court and the House of Commonscan be seen as more than opportunistic ploys, as steps towards remaking the Tories.

If this strategy succeeded, British politics would start to resemble US politics for the past few decades, in which the fundamental socio-economic contradictions are displaced onto a bitter and personalised struggle within the political elite over issues that leave these contradictions in place. How well it would serve the interests of capital to have a Tory Party defined primarily by the break with the EU is another matter. One of the features of the present period, as noted in previous issues of this journal, is that the long-term effects of the 2007-8 crash have included a political crisis involving a loosening of the links between base and superstructure.

Its an open question whether this situation is sustainable for long. But its interesting how little the far right, when they get into office, has done to challenge the neoliberal economic regime against some of whose effects they campaigned in opposition: witness how the Lega and allies in the Five Star Movement caved in to Brusselss demands to maintain budget discipline when in government together. (The main, and very important, exception is Trumps pursuit of a trade war with China.) The Tories under Johnson are extravagant in their championing of the free market. This must be some comfort for business leaders roiled by Brexit but queasy about the possibility of a Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn.

Breaking out of the impasse

Focusing on the more immediate political struggle, we should be clear that, despite Johnsons multiple institutional defeats, its the Tories (or perhaps more precisely the ruling Tory faction) who are on the front foot. They are clear about what they wanta general election in which they brand the other parties as saboteurs of the Brexit people voted for in June 2016. So too are the Lib Dems, whose new leader Jo Swinson is trying to make them the Remainer party by pledging to revoke Article 50, ie to stop Brexit without another referendum.

It is the Labour Party who are neither clear nor on the front foot. Corbyns instinct to try to finesse the Leave/Remain divide by focusing on essentially class issuesausterity, economic insecurity and inequality, the decay of the welfare statewas basically sound. The problem is that his voice has been muffled by the din made by the campaigndriven by Tom Watson and other leading figures in the Shadow Cabinetfor Labour to become a pro-Remain party. Corbyn has resisted this, both because it contradicts his basic strategy and because it would drive the Labour supporters who voted Leave into the arms of Johnson and Farage. But he hasnt been helped by the fact that key allies such as John McDonnell have joined the pro-Remain camp.

So there has been a drip-drip-drip of concessions, and an increasing tendency to block with the pro-Remain parties (in particular the Lib Dems and the Scottish Nationalists) and the pro-European Tory rebels, for example, in frustrating Johnsons demands for a general election. This is politically dangerous for two reasons. First of all, the Lib Dems in particular are no real allies. Swinson and her predecessor Vince Cable have been very open in their hostility to the idea of a Corbyn governmenteven as a stopgap in the event of Johnson being forced to resign. Secondly, and more fundamentally, allying with the neoliberal centre over Brexit makes it easier for the Tories to portray themselves, absurdly, as outsiders whose efforts to fulfil the will of the people are being blocked by the establishment. Labours traditional reverence for the institutions of the British state, what Tom Nairn once called the ideological subservience of Labourism to parliamentary necromancy, makes it easier for Johnson & Co to portray it as part of this establishment.

Maybe, when there is an election, Corbyn and his supporters can repeat what they achieved during the election campaign in June 2017 and shift the debate from Brexit to class. McDonnell has been building a programme of solid economic reforms, more of which were unveiled at the Labour Party conference last montha Green New Deal with 2030 as the deadline for a net zero carbon economy, a 32-hour working week in the next ten years, free personal care. In advance of the conference, the Financial Times ran a series of articles in which it scared itself and its readers about the prospect of a Corbyn government. It quotes a business lobbyist:

Whenever we hold events I always ask, what are you more worried about, a Corbyn government or a no-deal Brexit? Now the universal answer is Corbyn I would be worried about Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Seumas Milne, they dont give a fuck about the City of London, says one senior Labour figure. I think a lot of money would be shifted out on day one. There are a lot of people who are worried about the future financial security of the City.

This, then, is another ingredient in the mixthe possibility that the Brexit crisis might produce a left-wing Labour government committed to breaking with neoliberal austerity. The polls dont look good for such a prospect, since they have consistently given the Tories a lead since Johnson took over. But then they looked pretty bad for Labour in 2017. The Labour vote rose from a projected national vote of 27 percent in the local elections on 4 May to 40 percent in the general election on 8 June.

Repeating this looks tough but not impossible. The political scientist Matthew Goodwin wrote recently:

Many of [Labours] radical policies are more popular than people think. A new poll of a nationally representative sample of British voters for UnHerd Insight confirms a trend of ongoing and strong public support of nationalisation. Overall, 55 percent of all voters said that they supported the nationalisation of water, 52 percent supported the nationalisation of electricity and 51 percent felt the same way about gas. Remarkably, 60 percent supported the re-nationalisation of rail. Among Labour voters the figures were much higher: More than 70 percent supported putting utilities back into the public sector and more than 80 percent wanted the same for rail networks.

Such numbers reflect the large numbers of Brits who perceive the economic system as rigged in favour of the rich, and who are incredibly pessimistic about their economic prospects. In the shadow of the financial crisis and austerity, they feel squeezed by low growth, the rising cost of living and often have no direct memory of earlier decades, when key industries were controlled by the state.

Nor is nationalisation the only part of Labours radical agenda that enjoys fairly widespread public support For example, large majorities support a battery of policies that Corbyn will offer at the looming general election, including: Capping rent prices at the rate of inflation, increasing income taxes for the top 5 percent of earners, requiring businesses to reserve a proportion of seats on their boards for workers, scrapping university tuition fees, ensuring that at least 60 percent of Britains heat and electricity come from low-carbon or renewable sources by 2030, and re-nationalising utilities like energy and water.

These figures help to explain why Johnson talked about levelling up at the Tory party conference and why his chancellor of the exchequer Sajid Javid is turning on the spending tap. They understand that Corbyn is a real electoral threat. Turning the polls round again would require a very determined effort by the Corbynistas to mount mass agitation in support of their programme, willing Labour to get past the Brexit impasse and project a real alternative to the Tories. This campaign would have to overcome very intense media attacks and the usual sabotage by the Labour right, who will no doubt be reviving their farcical but damaging accusations of antisemitism against Corbyn. And if Labour did manage to tip enough of a fragmented electorate their way to win office, all this would soon seem in retrospect the easy part, as the new government sought to navigate the storm of opposition that would come from capital, the EU and the state itself, quite possibly amid the new global recession, signs of which are accumulating.

The fate of such a government would depend crucially on its ability to mobilise mass support from below. A paradox of Corbyns advance has been that, in the very hopes it has raised, it has encouraged people to wait for a Labour government. The resulting passivity has been encouraged by trade union leaders who always use the prospect of Labour in office as a substitute for actually doing their job and organising strikes. The problem has been exacerbated by the bitter divisions on the radical left over Brexit. The impasse in Westminster has also played a part, since it has turned the citizen mass into mere spectators of the frenzied manoeuvres in the House of Commons.

But now we are experiencing a revival of mass movements that originates outside the Brexit drama, or indeed the conventional parameters of the labour movement. This is, of course, the movement against climate change. Over the past year we have seen this swelling in scalefrom the initial school strikes, through the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protests that paralysed central London in April, to the global climate strikes on 20 and 27 September. 20 September in Britain was notable both for its national scale, perhaps the biggest wave of countrywide protests since the height of the movement against the Iraq War, and for significant trade union involvement (including official endorsement from the TUC).

Buoyant though the protests have been, they unfold beneath the shadow of a process of climate change, evidence of whose acceleration is building up alarmingly. That shadow became literal in August, when the fires in the Amazon brought darkness at noon to the Sao Paulo megalopolis 2790km to its south. This ecological catastrophe also highlighted the political struggle over the environment, with Brazils far-right president Jair Bolsonaro giving the green light to the destroyers of the Amazon. Elsewhere in this issue Eduardo Albuquerque and Cludia Feres Faria argue that his presidency represents the drive to break down the political barriers to a new, more predatory version of capitalism that seeks to profit from the destruction of nature. Greta Thunbergs denunciation of world leaders at the United Nations on 23 September has made the political polarisation visible at the global level.

So XR is completely right to proclaim a climate emergency, as the blind process of capital accumulation threatens the survival of human civilisation. But the movement of which it is part is at its very early stages. It has taken giant steps forward in the past year, as the fear of catastrophe has ceased simply to paralyse and become a stimulus to action. But halting climate change requires an immense global transformation, the radical reorientation of the world economy with vast implications for how we live. The barriers this faces are even greater than those that would confront a reforming Labour government in Britain. Everyone participating in this movement will undergo an immense and testing learning process.

Every socialist worth their salt should get involved in this movement. We have things to contributeunderstanding of capitalist economic mechanisms, experience of past struggles and their lessons, organisation and the skills it requires. But we also have a huge amount to learnfrom those who initiated these movements, who dont come from the conventional left, but also because we will all have to work out together how to take the struggle forward. There will be plenty of arguments over strategy and tactics along the way, but, if handled sensibly, they can be productive.

In all probability, the struggle to halt climate change defines the terrain on which anti-capitalist politics will develop in coming decades. It has the potential to renew a radical left badly damaged by the defeats and disappointments of the recent past. In the more immediate short term, the positive response that Corbyn and McDonnell have made to the climate protests and Labours adoption of a 2030 zero carbon target could help strengthen their own project.

But we cant lose sight in all this of the necessity of opposing the far right. Bolsonaros fiddling as the Amazon burns, like Trumps climate denial, dramatises the connection between the different struggles. In Britain, we face the more immediate threat that Johnsons power grab threatens to drag the whole political scene sharply to the right. Contrary to fond dreams of Remainers who see the EU as a bastion of progressive values, this will make British politics more like those in continental Europe, where the far right is a well-established electoral force in many countries. Witness the extraordinary decision of the incoming president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to appoint a commissioner responsible for Protecting the European Way of Life by enforcing tighter immigration controls.

This means that campaigning against racism and fascism remains essential. There are, of course, connections with the climate struggle, as floods, drought, and desertification drive people in the Global South from their homes. The advance of the far right continueswitness the successes the AfD has enjoyed in recent state elections. Building Stand Up to Racism and its counterparts elsewhere will be even more important in future. In Britain, defending free movement for EU citizens remains vital.

Shamefully some on the radical left find sophisticated pseudo-Marxist arguments to oppose what Lenin called freedom of migration. They point, for example, to the fact that freedom of movement is one of the EUs four freedoms (the others are of capital, goods and services) that underpin the Single Market; but this freedom is denied those from outside Europe, as von der Leyen has underlined in seeking to strengthen the EUs borders.

This is true enough, but this doesnt alter the fact that, when Britain finally leaves the EU, over 3 million workers here will lose the rights and the security they enjoyed the day before. This will make the working class in Britain weaker, not stronger. From a class perspective, defending free movement is a no-brainer. The Labour Party conference understood this when it voted in support of free movement; how sad it was to hear as principled an anti-racist as Diane Abbott say that Labour in office will use free movement as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the EU.

There is a thread running through all these different fronts in the struggle. We are confronting a system whose crisis is taking increasingly destructive forms and that is more and more trying to set us against each other. The task of socialists is to build a fighting solidarity of workers and the oppressed that unites us all against our common enemy.

Alex Callinicos is Professor of European Studies at Kings College London and editor of International Socialism.

Notes

References

Barber, Tony, 2019, EU Foresees a US-UK Axis after Brexit, Financial Times (19 September), http://www.ft.com/content/e9fb41e6-dad1-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17?fbclid=IwAR3xeUeZL4Ifmndr9J_YBSyRZeRfn-ak0hsNKMNrgdVO37RAt61nzxoqR-Q

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Riders of the storm - International Socialism Journal