ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I don’t think the third or indeed any of the candidates has to go through. One of them can withdraw in favour of another. This will be why there is a two-week delay between the two rounds of elections — to allow deals to be done in smoke-filled rooms.
I think the bar is 12.5%, one eighth. Which means that in theory 7 candidates could go through.
The Green Party is promising all sorts of goodies to be financed by taxing the rich more. George Monbiot asks
“How did we end up with a situation in which none of this is Labour policy?”
At one time it would have been and was. After WW1 the Labour Party set out to gradually change capitalism into a better society for workers through social reforms and nationalisations. But instead of Labour Party changing capitalism it was capitalism that changed Labour Party. The experience of being in government under capitalism, when they had to apply its economic law that priority must be given to profits and conditions for profit-making, made them more realistic and eventually to accept this. Today the only change they want is to replace the Tories in office while leaving everything else basically the same.
The same fate awaits the Greens if ever they came into office. And has in Germany. So Monbiot’s advice to vote Green in certain constituencies is urging people to go down a dead end.
Incidentally, the Greens are promising to stay in the NATO war alliance — a good start on the road that leads to nowhere.
Anyway, here’s what he writes:
Chinese capitalist expansionism in South America:
And some leftwing groups like this one still think that China is somehow “socialist”.
Webinar: China proves that a new world is possible! Delegates report back from China
Russian warships in the Caribbean, riposte to US giving Ukraine permission to use US weapons to bomb the border area with Russia?
A tweet of our election leaflet for general use to re-tweet:
It’s true as well. Just checked.
https://www.afed.cz/text/8114/let-s-clear-the-skies-over-ukraine
This part of that report was revealing:
“On the weekend of the “Action Week” there was also an Anarchist Bookfair organised by the Czech Anarchist Federation, which openly defends the Ukrainian war effort and supports the formation of anarchist units in the Ukrainian army. The Bookfair issued a statement distancing itself from the Action Week and the Czech AF put out a leaflet denouncing its participants as “anarcho-Putinists”.”
An anarchist unit in the Ukrainian army ! What next? Why not one in every army?
We have prepared a leaflet for distribution outside the two constituencies we are contesting suggesting that those who want socialism cast a write-in vote for it by writing WORLD SOCIALISM across their ballot paper.
Here is a link to it if you want to post on your social media accounts.
Physical copies are being printed and should be available next week. If you would like some to hand out where you live email Head Office on: spgb [at] world socialism.org
Kent and Sussex branch report that our candidate in Folkestone & Hythe, Andy Thomas, has been invited to this hustings on Monday 17 June and has accepted, despite him and two other candidates not being listed as participants.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-arts-and-culture-policy-election-debate-tickets-921493420627
Of course there can and will be a deal in the end. What do you make of this:
Socialist ideas need to flow in society or it is dominated by propriety ideations
Exactly. That’s what we are currently organised to do as it easier as a group than as an isolated individual. Here in the islands off the north west coast of the Eurasian land mass we can publish a magazine, pamphlets and leaflets and distribute them, maintain a website, contest elections, etc, all with the above in view.
I can see it will be more difficult where you are in the southern hemisphere but in fact there are a few other socialists in your part of the world.
Yes it’s not easy to decide who is the moindre mal if you believe in that principle. I have always liked Steve Coleman’s quip that what we are faced with is the evil of two lessers.
Useful but not entirely reliable. For instance, Karl Vidol in Southgate and Wood Green is listed twice, once as Independent and once as TUSC. By coincidence, a link to the Statement of Persons Nominated for that constituency is given in an earlier post on this thread. He is clearly TUSC.
I don’t think Lefties will use the tactic of standing as independents again as they will suffer the fate that all little-known independents do — just getting the votes of friends and family, without getting over what you are standing for across: you just appear on the ballot paper as “Independent” with no emblem. You could be anybody standing for anything. Whats the point of that?
I see the author takes a potshot at us for standing against all of them if they happen to be standing. But then we are standing for socialism and nothing but while they are standing for anything but socialism. In fact when they do mention socialism they mean state capitalism.
The only one on that list who does say they are standing for an alternative society to capitalism that is recognisably more or less the same as what we mean by socialism is the Communist Future candidate in Manchester Central, but even they have a list of desirable reforms — and are accused by the others of being “reminiscent of the SPGB”. See their manifesto here:
