The past year has seen a groundswell of opposition and resistance to the cuts and austerity plans the governments and financial institutions of the world are trying to inflict upon millions of people. In Greece, the government is threatened with mass strikes and will be forced to default on its debt, and in Spain and the US “Los Indignados” and the Occupy Wall Street movement have brought anti-capitalist ideas into the mainstream, a charge that’s being led and supported by thousands of newly radicalised young people in those countries. In Scotland this growing radicalisation has also been observed, as alongside traditional and established forces of the labour movement,  fresh momentum has been gained by new mobilisations of young people, from the student demonstrations against fees, to the six month long Hetherington Occupation and the recently launched Coalition of Resistance in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

National Executive Committee,
Scottish Socialist Youth

17 October 2011

Iain Gray: lol.

The polls are closed, and we’ll know the results of the Scottish parliament elections, and whether or not Westminister has a different shitey voting system (SO EXCITING!) by Friday morning.  SSY teams will be bringing you amazing liveblogging from the Glasgow and North East counts, with extra reporting from SSY’s secret underground complex. But this won’t be your normal boring Guardian liveblog  - have a look at last years to get an idea of what to expect. This year, expect us to call for the deaths of EVEN MORE bastards! If we haven’t all gone crazy by the end of the counting, enjoy the liveblog!

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Polls opened this morning and votes are currently being cast in the Scottish Parliamentary election. As #2 candidate on the Scottish Socialist Party’s Glasgow Regional List, I should be out at the polling stations, desperately trying to convince voters to put an ‘X’ beside Scotland’s only party of independence, socialism and internationalism. The bogging weather has driven me indoors, where the only way to ease my inactivity-related guilt is to blog about how all parties are bastards except the SSP.

The campaign has been characterised by Labour imploding under the laughable ‘leadership’ of the embarassingly shit Mr Gray; the main parties refusing to lay out resistance to cuts, while squabbling about such red-hot issues as whether or not to rejig emergency services’ management boards; and the public’s interest in Holyrood plummeting to an all-time low.

Gray gunning for power

Analysts are predicting victory for the pro-independence Scottish National Party, with an increase in their number of seats. This seemed highly unlikely at the start of the campaign, with Labour riding high in the polls, independence unpopular and Alex Salmond’s “arc of prosperity” reduced to rubble. So confident was I that Labour would romp it, I bet SSP Glasgow  top-of-the-list candidate Frances Curran a hefty fiver that Iain Gray would be the next First Minister. Though I will weep at the loss of 10% of my weekly giro, I am mighty relieved that Elmer Fudd will not be leading my country for the next 5 years. (Dinnae fret about the cash either, ah’m gonnae pull a fly wan n dingy payin her).

If Scottish Labour’s beleaguered leader has done nothing else in this campaign, he has at least provided us with plenty of laughs -- at his expense. As well as allegedly shiting out of being in the same ASDA as Salmond while they were both visiting the seaside paradise of Ardrossan, the aptly-named Gray made headlines by running away from anti-cuts activists in Glasgow, seeking refuge in a local Subway branch. It’s not known whether he went for a 6-inch or a footlong, but if anything like his speeches, it would have been full of cheese and lacking substance with a nasty aftertaste. Many of the protesters wanted to speak to him about the planned closure of the Accord Centre in the East End, a vital resource for disabled people and their families, which the Labour Council are demolishing in favour of a car park for the Commonwealth Games. Check their facebook page here.

I’ve been out and voted already. And I will now undermine the principle of the secret ballot by telling you what I did. Firstly, I voted SSP (obv lol) on the regional ballot paper. The SSP look set to receive an increase in votes compared to the disastrous 2007 election, but we are likely to fall short of the numbers needed to return a socialist MSP. Oh wellz.

Then, I held my nose and voted for Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP in my constituency, just as I did in 2007. The way I see it, there have been many issues on which socialists would challenge the SNP-led Scottish Government of 2007-2011; not least dropping their policy of regulating the buses after receiving a substantial donation from Stagecoach millionaire Brian Soutar, or overruling Aberdeenshire Council and helping evil tycoon Donald Trump to ruin the world. But they are also head and shoulders above the rest -- including Labour -- from a progressive viewpoint. Their regime began with the Scottish Govt stepping in to save hospitals from closure in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire.

SAVE CRICHTON CAMPUS!

In the first few months of government, keen to avoid triggering clashes with popular resistance movements, they intervened to prevent damaging school mergers in Edinburgh (following a campaign led by SSY organiser Sarah, among others) and stopped the closure of Glasgow Uni’s Crichton Campus -- another campaign with a high level of input from our members. They nicked socialist policy and got rid of Prescription Charges, even if they did unnecessarily stagger it over 4 years, costing thousands of people money in “sick tax”, but making them look good just before this election. Shame they didn’t stick to their word when they (again borrowing from the SSP manifesto) said they’d scrap Council Tax. But they did destroy a key component of Thatcher’s legacy by abolishing “right to buy” on council housing. Sometimes politics comes down to a choice between 2 undesirable options, making the SNP & Salmond an easy choice compared to New Labour & Gray. Speaking of undesirable options…

There was the referendum on changing the electoral system to use Alternative Vote. I am in favour of real electoral reform, to break the stranglehold of the big-money mainstream parties and stop the crime of huge chunks of the population effectively being disenfranchised because they live in a local Labour/Tory/whoever dictatorship.

Props to Stefan

But AV will not change anything. The LibDems know it, the Yes campaign knows it, everyone knows it. And no-one even supports AV! However, I didn’t wanna vote to preserve FPTP. Also, I consider this an illegitimate plebiscite as it abuses the people’s wish for proportionality by offering 2 systems which aren’t proportional. Therefore I fulfilled a lifelong ambition, drawing a giant willy on the ballot paper. I also wrote “DO YOU THINK WE’RE STUPID? THIS REFERENDUM IS A FARCE” and “Clegg, Cameron, both are dicks”. Yas.

Thankfully in Scotland we have a slightly better electoral system (AMS), so there’s a chance a few Greens will get in. Some sources say there’s a chance that SNP+Greens+Margo McDonald could equal a pro-independence majority. Here’s hoping. From that point of view (and for several other reasons) it is to be hoped that arch-Unionist and sham-socialist George Galloway is not succesful in his self-serving effort to grab a seat in the Parly.

As time has gone on, the shine has somewhat faded from the once bright and hopeful Scottish Parliament. Certainly it was sad that the ‘Rainbow Parliament’ turned grey in 2007, with the SSP presence wiped out along with many other smaller parties and independents. The relatively low levels of interest in this campaign show that the Parliament is in danger of becoming irrelevant to most working-class people. There is only one way for Holyrood to prevent that: by representing the wishes of  the vast majority of the Scottish people, and resisting the program of cuts and austerity which has been led by the ConDem coalition at Westminster.

Some career politicians may lie that the cuts are necessary, others that their Parliament can’t do anything. The social movements will pressurise them all. We must tell them: you may not have the constitutional capacity to defy the cuts, but there is certainly the political capacity, and it must be used. The people of Scotland would fully support a Parliament which offered an alternative, where public services are protected and expanded, and the rich are taxed more to pay for that. A defiant, anti-cuts Parliament would be a major act of Scottish self-determination and a key step towards an independent socialist republic.

The likelihood is, no matter who wins, we’ll get another crop of careerist bastards. But those in authority are vulnerable. I am optimistic about the capacity for struggle and change in Scotland, and I’m cheered by the recent emergence of a nascent grassroots anti-capitalist movement based on direct action and direct democracy. Whether the politicians respond or not, there is a new world to be built.

George gets defensive about how many people want him to stand

After lots of threatening to do it over the past 5 years, George Galloway looks set to finally stage a comeback attempt to Glasgow.

This weekend, his party, RESPECT, are discussing the possibility of setting up in Scotland. But before they’ve even had a chance to vote on it, George has as good as said he’s going to do it anyway, if not as RESPECT then as ‘George 4 Glasgow.’

When asked why he’s thinking of doing this, his justification has had two major points: “I am awesome” and that he’s against “separatism.” So we can expect him to run an inspired campaign about how much we need him waffling away in the Scottish Parliament, and against independence. Just check out his recent performance on Newsnight Scotland, where he managed to not mention a single socialist policy, talked about how he was a celebrity and the only piece of politics he did advocate was British unionism:

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Notorious New Labour Knobhead Phil Woolas is facing explusion from Parliament after a court ruled today that he’d broken electoral law during his successful re-election campaign in May. This is after he lied throughout his election material, which falsely claimed that his rival Lib Dem candidate was being “wooed” by Islamist extremists.

Indeed, it didn’t stop there: Woolas decided to centre his whole campaign around the “tough” line he’d taken as immigration minister from 2008-2010. He managed to weave a whole fantasy around this: that “militant Muslims” were waging a war against him in alliance with a local Lib Dem candidate and his party’s crazy plans to circumvent local planning rules to build Mosques in every street, and give an amnesty to “hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants”. The special election court’s ruling today means that Woolas will be barred from parliament for three years, and a by-election will now be held in his seat.

Woolas claims to have come into politics as an anti-racist campaigner – he joined the Labour Party in college and ran a “campaign against Paki-bashing”. He was elected in 1997, in one of the most ethnically diverse seats in the country, Oldham East. Phil said in 2008: “It’s had a race riot, it’s had a huge BNP presence and it’s a marginal seat. It’s a complete crucible. But we’ve never had a BNP councillor – I hope I’ve had something to do with that by getting in and getting dirty.”

It’s now fairly evident what Woolas meant by “getting in and getting dirty”.  He didn’t mean confronting the BNP’s ideas, politically and in the streets. He didn’t mean proving the BNP’s politics to be based on lies and hysteria, division and hate. No, it’s now clear that he meant taking the votes of the BNP by seizing the ground of the BNP. And not by talking about real issues that the far-right do occasionally bring up, but by pandering to their obsession with “Islamic extremism”, immigration, and asylum seekers. The Labour Party were so impressed that, after years of scapegoating Muslim women and refugees, he was given the role of Immigration Minister in 2008. He proceeded with glee in his new role of kicking out desperate asylum seekers, attacking charities that offer vital help to them and appeasing the right wing press with his tough talk on “immigration caps” and jobs for the “indigenous population”.

Phil Woolas is a racist fuck, no mistaking that. He made a calculated decision that whipping up racial tension in his area – which as he helpfully reminds us, suffered serious race riots less than a decade ago –  would be a sure-fire vote winner. Much of the commentary surrounding Woolas’ outrageous election material has stated that his leaflets read more like something the BNP or UKIP would produce than a supposed social-democratic party. But Woolas didn’t face victimisation or even official condemnation in his party – in fact his outright Islamophobia was applauded, with “lefty saviour” Ed Miliband appointing him as a shadow Home Office minister, responsible for immigration, in his new opposition cabinet!

They weren’t the leaflets of the BNP or UKIP, they were just the leaflets of a Labour Party beset by racist, anti-immigrant populism. All Woolas did was take twelve years of racist Labour policies to their logical conclusion andstuck it on a leaflet. What he said wasn’t much worse than what the wider party was proclaiming during the election – and then when Labour lost, the leadership became stuck on blaming the fact that their discourse on the issue hadn’t been right-wing enough, that they’d “failed to connect”. With the exception of Diane Abbott (who finished last with 7% of the vote), every candidate in the recent Labour leadership election was united in holding this view. Andy Burnham said of immigration, in a comment surely worthy of the BNP: ”People aren’t racist, but they say it has increased tension, stopped them getting access to housing and lowered their wages”. Go figure.

Burnham is lying – the Labour Party are convinced that most working class people are racist. No one would dispute that racism is a large problem in our society – but the way to get around this is to challenge and confront racist ideas wherever they come from, not pander to it through racist immigration laws and anti-terror legislation that serves little purpose beyond being a useful tool to harass Muslims.

Phil Woolas may have gone through a technicality of electoral law , but the ideas he represents are still every bit ingrained within the Labour Party.

Yesterday’s mid-term elections in the United States saw the whole of the House of Representatives, one third of the Senate, and various state legislatures up at the polls. The big story has been the Republicans taking control of the House, and a number of high profile victories for the crazy far-right conspiracy theorists that make up the Tea Party. Elsewhere, the Democrats have retained slim control of the Senate. Widespread disillusionment with Obama’s failure to deliver the ‘chaaaange’ he’d promised, alongside a radicalisation of the Republican grassroots through the Tea Party, is largely being blamed.

The exception to this right-wing tide sweeping America seems to have been California, where the Democrats held onto both their Senate seats, and gained the Governorship back from the GOP (The Governator RIP). In California, however, there was another election going on which has been the subject of much attention over the past few months, since it qualified to get on the ballot back in March. This was Proposition 19, a proposal to legalise, tax and regulate the manufacture and use of cannabis.

Unfortunately, Prop 19 fell yesterday, but it was a close run battle, with 46.3% -- nearly 3.3 million -- voters favouring legalisation, and 53.8% against. The bill had attracted widespread support, backed by a number of high profile former police chiefs, medical professionals, district attorneys, trade unions, politicians from all ends of the spectrum, and even the guy who invented Gmail. But lining up on the other side was an equally high number of police chiefs, politicians, big business, nearly every newspaper in the state, and Arnie himself. The state attorney general had also vowed to use the full force of federal authority to crack down on the legalisation.

The opposition to Prop 19 ran a ridiculous scaremongering campaign, claiming that if it passed that the state’s entire workforce, from school bus drivers to teachers, would suddenly be incapacitated by pot, that streets would be flooded with ‘marijuana advertisements’ and that the proposals are a ‘jumbled, legal nightmare’. Much unlike current drugs laws then!

Although the vote was lost, Prop 19 campaigners are heartened by the huge support that they did gain, and have succeeded in bringing arguments against drug prohibition into the mainstream. Cannabis use is already a huge grey area in the state, where there’s a thriving medical marijuana business. But there’s still tens of thousands of arrests relating to cannabis every year -- 78,000 in 2008. It’s particularly notable that the legalise campaign received big support from black civil rights organisations like the NAACP -- drug prohibition is a civil rights issue, with the arrest figures speaking for themselves: in LA, 10% of the population is black, but are 30% of cannabis-related arrests.

California borders on part of Mexico, where the drug war continues to bring daily death and destruction to millions of peoples lives. A new approach is needed, and although the proposition fell, it was nonetheless an important step forward in the fight to bring an end to the madness of global drugs prohibition.

California: where retired police officers do TV adverts for legalising weed

President Chavez casting his vote

Sunday saw a key test of the strength of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, with elections to the National Assembly.

The opposition to the revolution, which is composed of the middle and bosses classes who are angry about losing their monopoly over Venezuela’s wealth and political power, and who are funded by US imperialism, had a big push for the elections. For the first time since President Chavez was elected in 1998, they seemed to have got their act together a bit. For years, they have been bitterly squabbling amongst themselves, as they tried to come to terms with the fact that the poor majority of Venezuelans had no interest in their right wing politics any more. In the last Assembly elections in 2005, they knew they didn’t have a chance in hell of getting anywhere, and so pretended there was a chance of fraud and refused to participate.

As a result, for the last five years the National Assembly has been almost entirely dominated by supporters of the revolution. Having over two thirds of the parliament allowed the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and their allies to pass laws quickly, appoint officials to national positions, and generally not really have to care what the US puppets in the opposition thought.

But this time around, knowing that international observers and anyone with any common sense knows that Venezuela is ultra-democratic, and allegations of vote rigging would just look stupid, they got together to finally put together a united slate for the elections, the Democratic Unity Roundtable or MUD.

Given that last time they didn’t stand at all, winning anything would have been an advance for them. Internationally the media built up MUD, claiming they were set to win big. But realistically, everyone knew the revolution still has the support of the majority. The big question was, would PSUV be able to win a two thirds majority (110 seats)?

In the end the tally left the socialists just short of what they needed to retain a ’supermajority.’ But they still have an overwhelming majority of the seats, with PSUV having won 95 seats so far (three have still to declare), giving it 58% of the seats. MUD won 62 seats, or 39%, while the Fatherland For All party (which is pro-revolution but not part of PSUV) won 2. Under Venezuela’s revolutionary constitution 3 seats are reserved for representatives of indigenous peoples, and those that took them are part of neither side.

The make up of the newly elected assembly

This means that the government will still be able to pass normal laws and are still in control of the assembly, but it leaves more scope for the opposition to slow things down, force the government to negotiate with them, and generally make a nuisance of themselves. Laws that relate to issues in the revolutionary constitution have to be passed by two thirds majority, so that will now be more difficult. And the assembly also appoints positions such as the Supreme Court and the Electoral Council, which the opposition will now have some say in.

Socialists in Venezuela were still celebrating the victory, even if it wasn’t as strong as they would have liked. As President Chavez put it himself on Twitter: “The election was a solid victory, sufficient to continue deepening democratic and Bolivarian socialism. We must continue strengthening the revolution!”

He added at a press conference: “Nothing extraordinary happened. Something extraordinary would have been if we won 130 deputies, extraordinary would have been if we lost the majority.”

When you compare the support the government to other countries, especially the US or UK, it enjoys an unbelievably high level of popularity, considering how long they have been in power, and how difficult the economic circumstances are. Nevertheless, the election didn’t give the socialists as good as a result as they have often enjoyed in other electoral tests. There’s several reasons for that. The video below goes into a lot of them, but I’ll try and outline them briefly as well:

- The economic situtation for Venezuela has been difficult, as it has for every country. The economy shrank last year, as did most other countries in Latin America. However, this problem has been vastly overstated by the anti-government media, both in Venezuela and abroad.

- There’s been a big problem with electricity shortages over the last few months. Venezuela depends on hydroelectric dams for most of its electricity (which is a good thing, there’s almost no fossil fuel input), and there’s been a severe drought (at least in part due to climate change) that has affected their ability to generate energy. On top of that, during the years that electricity was privatised before the revolution, the private companies put very little investment in, meaning that the grid is outdated and over taxed. The solution that workers are fighting for to this problem is expanding socialism and workers’ control in the electricity industry.

- A major corruption scandal was discovered this year, involving bosses at the state owned food company PDVAL. State food companies sell food at prices much lower than in the normal supermarket, to allow the poor to have access to healthy, nutritious food. But it turned out that some bosses had been hoarding food in order to make more money for themselves. Although there’s an ongoing vigorous investigation, it obviously reflects badly on the government.

- General dissatisfaction that change isn’t happening fast enough, and that social problems such as rampant crime remain major issues. The revolutionaries are divided between the radical, pro-socialist and direct democracy advocates, and those who are more “pragmatic” and “moderate”. For example, although the government has been trying to promote ‘communal councils’, which are organisations of direct democratic self rule at a local level, many local politicians and mayors see them as a threat to their authority, and are trying to block their work. The opposition has not done anything particularly new in the last couple of years, but some of the failings of the revolutionary government have left some people disenchanted, and less willing to turn up and vote socialist.

Venzuelan voters show the ink on their fingers, which signifies they've voted

The solution to all of the problems facing Venezuela is, of course, deepening the revolution and expanding the construction of socialism. This article has a lot of concrete suggestions of ways to go about that. But what’s been farcical has been watching MUD and their international pals try and claim that the socialist election victory was in fact a rejection of the revolution.

“Here it is very clear, Venezuela said no to Cuban-style communism, Venezuela said yes to the path of democratic construction and now we have the legitimacy of vote of the citizenry, we are the representatives of the people,” said María Corina Machado, who was elected deputy of Miranda state.

MUD tried to claim they had won the majority of the popular vote, something that was actually total bollocks based on counting the Fatherland For All deputies as members of the opposition, but which was faithfully reported in the international media.

In fact, comparing the opposition’s performance this time around to the last election isn’t really comparing like for like, because last time they didn’t stand. If you compare their results this time to the last election they actually participated in (2000), they actually lost 20 seats! New revolutionary deputy Roy Chaderton called their claims a “media farce”.

“They can celebrate whatever they want, but it is striking that they are celebrating when they have obtained 20 fewer seats than the last time when they had deputies in the National Assembly,” he said. “The reality is that, compared to the elections for the 2000-2005 session, they have 20 fewer deputies elected, and the government has won enough support to elect 3 more deputies than what it had in that period.”

“In the case of the National Assembly, it’s good that the opposition are now part of it, that’s where they should be, but they withdrew in 2005, hours before the beginning of the electoral process, to try to delegitimize it, and, besides, hoping that the [US] Marines would do their dirty work to replace President Chávez,” he emphasized.

Chaderton explained that “between 2005 and 2010, as they didn’t participate and withdrew for the negative motives that I explained, they can now claim that their representation has increased 6,600%, but all that is part of the media farce, corrupt deals, fake news to mislead the national and international public opinion, with the complicity, of course, of the international Far Right.”

Taking a look at the British media, it seems that they are either very confused about what’s going on, or in fact just tools of this right wing propaganda campaign against Venezuela. The latter is surely the case for Rupert Murdoch owned Sky News, who seemed all mixed up about the results, talking about “massive gains” for the opposition. Although their article has been fixed now, a picture caption down the page originally claimed that PSUV hadn’t won a majority!

Even worse is the coverage of the supposedly left wing Guardian newspaper. I’m a great fan of their site, and it’s my main non-socialist place I go to check on the news, but consistently the information they give readers on Venezuela is utter pish and propaganda. This week they saw fit, just after the government won a election internationally verified as completely democratic, to run a poll in which the majority of their daft readers voted that Chavez is a dictator!

Full of nonsense: opposition demonstrators

What this proves is that the supposedly impartial western media, including the BBC and the Guardian, are hopelessly compromised when it comes to reporting Venezuela. Venezuela is the country on Earth today that has put socialism back on the agenda of the human race, and offered a beacon of hope to people struggling all over the world. Faced with that kind of threat, the international ruling class are going to make sure all of their media outlets are pumping out the maximum anti-socialist propaganda they can. If you want to get the real low down on what’s going on in Venezuela, the best source is the excellent Venezuela Analysis site. And of course, when important stuff is happening, you can also count on this blog to give you full coverage!

Bonus: Check out former Cuban President Fidel Castro’s message ahead of the elections: “I would not fail to vote as a sacred duty: whatever time it is, before the rain, when it’s raining, or after the rain, as long as there is a polling station open. If I were Venezuelan, even under thunder and lightning, I would fight to the limit to make September 26 a great victory.”

There’s a full state by state breakdown of the results here.

Stockholm's Gamla Stan (old town)

It’s now a week ago since Sweden’s general election (which I caught a glimpse of when in Stockholm at the time) and the left there have been faced with the task of reviewing what went wrong, why the Social Democrats have fallen to their lowest level since 1914, why the Left Party lost further support, and why a party with its roots in fascism has been able to enter parliament for the first time (by crossing the 4% threshold). In case anyone’s interested here’s the results in full:

Social Democrats: 30.7% (-4.3), 112 seats (-18)

Moderates (Conservatives): 30.1% (+3.9), 107 seats (+10)

Green Party: 7.3% (+2.1), 25 seats (+6)

Liberal Party: 7.1% (-0.4), 24 seats (-4)

Centre Party: 6.6% (-1.3), 23 seats (-6)

Sweden Democrats (far right): 5.7% (+2.8), 20 seats (+20)

Christian Democrats: 5.6% (-1.0), 19 seats (-5)

Left Party: 5.6% (-0.3), 19 seats (-3)

This gives a total of 43.6% for the red-green bloc (of Social Democrats, Greens and Left Party) and 49.4% for the four-party governing right-wing alliance. Neither side has a majority but the right-wing alliance are only 2 seats short. The fascist Sweden Democrats therefore hold the balance of power although the right-wing Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt (who has governed since 2006) says he will have nothing to do with them, instead seeking the support of the Green Party or possibly the Social Democrats on some issues.

There are two main issues here I think to be discussed, the first is the failure of the left and the second is the frightening growth of the far-right.

The left’s failure

Right-wing Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt

If the right stays in power until 2014 (ie. if there doesn’t have to be a new election) then it will be the longest time that the left has been out of government since 1920. The most successful time for the right before now had been between 1976 and 1982 although the Prime Minister back then (Thorbjörn Fälldin) was not nearly as right-wing as Fredrik Reinfeldt is today.

Over the last 4 years Reinfeldt has pushed through tax cuts of 100 billion kronor, allowed schools and hospitals to be sold off to private companies, and massive profits to be taken out of publicy funded schools and other essential services. In addition Reinfeldt has made it far more expensive for many workers to be part of the trade-union run unemployment insurance schemes – because of the way the system now works it costs the most in those industries where the risk of unemployment in considered to be greatest (which means that those in low paid service sector jobs often end up paying far more than doctors or teachers). A consequence of this is that many have fallen out of the insurance scheme and have left their unions, resulting in a record collapse in trade union membership.

Perhaps the most outrageous policy Reinfeldt has pushed through has been an assault on sjukförsäkring (sick pay). Under an attempt to reduce what they had claimed was Europe’s highest number of people on sick pay the government have imposed a limit on how long people can claim sick pay for before they are forced to enter the labour market and seek work (which even if you are perfectly healthy is not easy in a country with one of Europe’s highest unemployment rates – as many as 30% of young Swedes are out of work). There have been cases of people with terminal cancer receiving letters saying their benefits are stopping and that they need to start looking for work. As a result of public anger the government claims to have relaxed the rules for those with certain particularly severe illnesses but cases of extremely sick people having their benefits cut continue to emerge in the Swedish media.

Why has there not been more public outrage about this you might wonder. One strategy which the right have adopted is to claim to be a party for those who work as opposed to those who don’t. They have pitched those who are healthy and who have a job against those who are ill or who are unemployed. ”We want to stand up for those who work while the opposition want to give money to those who don’t” is the sort of statement you commonly hear from Fredrik Reinfeldt. Ironically Reinfeldt and his Moderate Party have claimed to be the only ones capable of creating jobs – this is the same Reinfeldt who has presided over a record increase in Sweden’s unemployment rate, over a growing section of young people who feel permanently locked out of the labour market.

"Only one workers' party can create jobs" - Moderate Party election poster

At first things seemed to be going well for the left and for years they had been well ahead in the polls – sometimes by as much as 20 points. This lead though, for a variety of reasons, dwindled away and in the run up to the election the right-wing was again in the lead by 5-10 points. Despite a final surge in the last few days with the left strongly highlighting the issue of sick pay they were unable to regain their support and the Social Democrat’s share of the vote fell to a record low – the lowest since 1914.

So what went wrong? Many have blamed the unfavourable media coverage with 3 out of the 4 national newspapers (Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet) clearly supporting the right-wing government and consistently portraying the Social Democratic leader Mona Sahlin as an uncharismatic loser. This is undoubtedly the case and almost certainly contributed to the left’s defeat. Yet a number of years ago the Social Democrats and trade unions themselves chose to sell off many of the newspapers they once owned, so they too can be held at least partly responsible for the right-wing bias of the Swedish press.

Red-green party leaders

Another thing that was obvious when following the Norwegian reaction to the election is that the Swedish trade unions, as opposed to their counterparts in Norway, have not been particularly active in mobilising support for the left. Whether or not this is due to a general displeasure with the red-green alliance and its policies or has some other cause I’m not quite sure.

But perhaps most important is the tactics adopted by the red-greens themselves and their failure to fundamentally challenge the social and political narrative being put forward by the right-wing government. On far too many issues the red-greens have basically appeared to accept or take for granted the changes which Reinfeldt has been trying to impose on Swedish society. Take for example the so-called ‘jobbskatteavdrag’ (job tax reduction) which has involved income earned through work being taxed at a lower level than income earned through other sources ie. pensions or benefits. This is part of Reinfeldt’s tax cuts which have seen 100 billion kronor of state revenues slashed and are, according to him, fundamental to the government’s attempt to create jobs. Instead of reversing the jobbskatteavdrag the red-greens had decided, in their alternative budget, to keep 90% of the right’s tax cuts and instead cut pensioner’s taxes down to the reduced level currently paid by a worker.

Although Mona Sahlin and the red-greens repeatedly said that they would put welfare before tax cuts, by talking about reducing tax for pensioners as opposed to reversing the jobbskatteavdrag they clearly played into the hands of the government’s tax cutting agenda. Equally the red-greens refused to offer any bold alternative of large-scale investment or to fundamentally challenge the role of profit and private enterprise within the public sector. Only the Left Party’s leader Lars Ohly talked about banning companies from skimming profits away from schools and hospitals while the Greens and many within the Social Democrats didn’t seem to have a problem with it whatsoever.

Yet despite the failure of the red-green’s watered down programme some Social Democrats seem to believe the poor election results are in fact a result of them moving too far to the left, of forming an alliance with the Left Party (who, if you believe many on the right, are still a bunch of unreformed communists who want to overthrow the democratic system). The  Social Democratic party’s secretary or leader of the Stockholm region (I’m not quite sure which) came on to the radio the day after the election to say that marginally increasing property taxes and taxes on the rich was a ”very strange way to get the middle class on board” and that next time they will have do more to appeal to the better off. Interestingly Sweden has among the most class-divided voting in Europe -- it’s estimated that among those earning above £50,000 a year around 90% vote for the right whereas immigrants, the poor, sick and unemployed overwhelmingly vote for the left (but unfortunately are much less likely to turn out to vote).

Left Party election stall

Not everyone agrees with this view of course. Some  Social Democrats understand that their future lies in mobilising the working class, immigrants, the poor, those who live in the more deprived surburbs, those who are disillusioned with politics. And they understand that in doing so they will need to work closely with the unions. As for the radical left the only party currently with any national significance is the Left Party who have worked closely with the Social Democrats. Some in the party’s newspaper Flamman have begun to debate their future and what went wrong (the Left Party fell slightly from 5.9% to 5.6% and lost 3 seats). It has been argued that they should do more to distance themselves from their communist legacy or that they could have been a more energising force in Swedish politics if they had joint male and female leaders. Many also feel that the red-greens were too ‘nice’ to the right-wing government during the campaign. Whether or not the Left Party should remain as a slightly more radical version of the Social Democrats, tied down as part of the three party red-green alliance, is something which hasn’t received so much attention.

When I was in Stockholm at the time of the election I attended some protests, saw some speeches and talked to some socialists there. One of those I saw speaking was Left Party leader Lars Ohly. His speech wasn’t bad and he mounted a strong attack on the policies of the right-wing government. Inevitably though his party’s reputation for radicalism has been tarnished by joining the red-green alliance and failing to move the Social Democrats sufficiently to the left. Sweden does still, from the impression I get, have quite a vibrant radical left compared to Scotland. As well as the Left Party there are of course other minor far left parties and Sweden also has one of the strongest anarchist movements in Europe which includes the syndicalist union the SAC. In addition there is a feminist party called the Feminist Initative, led by former Left Party leader Gudrun Schyman. I saw a lot of their posters up around Södermalm in southern Stockholm although FI ended up with a national share of under 1%, down slightly on last time.

Rise of the far-right

Fascist leader Jimmie Åkesson

The rise of the far-right is another extremely worrying trend we can observe from the election. The Sweden Democrats, a party with its roots in the Swedish neo-nazi movement, took 5.7% of the vote which is a doubling of the share they received last time and over the 4% threshold meaning they now have 20 seats in the Riksdag (Swedish parliament). The party’s share varies a lot from one part of Sweden to another: in their base of Skåne in the far south they averaged around 10% and in one neighbourhood near Malmö they took 35%. In Stockholm the party’s support is much lower at around 3%.

Despite the SD’s success there is definitely a lot of opposition to them from throughout Swedish society and many Swedes are determined to prevent their country moving in the same way as Denmark. There the nationalist, anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party have been given enormous influence by the more established right-wing parties who rely on their votes in parliament. As a result Denmark now has one of the strictest immigration policies in the whole of the EU and in recent years we have seen a hysteria in Denmark around Muslims and the role of Islam. Politicians on both the right and left in Sweden have said they won’t touch the SD with a poker and that neither will they alter Sweden’s immigration policy (which is currently among Europe’s most liberal) just because of pressure from the far right. Whether or not this position holds up in the long-tern we’ll need to wait and see. Already before the election the government had started deporting large numbers of Iraqi refugees from Sweden as they argue it’s now safe for them to return.

There has been a dispute on the left in Sweden among what tactics are best if the far-right is to be defeated. In the run up to the election a number of SD rallies were broken up or disrupted by anarchists and others on the radical left. A protest I was at briefly in Stockholm involved hundreds of people surrounding a rally by SD leader Jimmie Åkesson and blowing vuzuzelas in a successful attempt to drown out his speech (check out the video below). Some though, such as Left Party leader Lars Ohly, have criticised such tactics, saying they are anti-democratic and risk allowing Åkesson to portray himself as a victim.

The acclaimed Swedish left-wing author Henning Mankell (in an article for The Guardian about why the SD should have been ”argued into oblivion”) also writes that:

“The only way to deal with people with racist, xenophobic and generally populist views – like the German National Socialism of the 1920s – is through a determined dialogue that we never abandon … I believe that it was precisely the refusal of the other parties, from left and right, to debate with the SD that allowed them to grow from nothing to 6% of the vote. If we had had the debate, the SD might have got into parliament, but with far fewer seats. In fact, they could have been kept out of parliament altogether”.

I’m not sure if I agree with him fully here. While it is certainly essential that we expose the far-right’s prejudice and lies there is always the danger that when you bring a party like the SD into the debate you further legitimise them and give their message a degree of respectability. Although their message shouldn’t be hard to disprove through rational argument it is unfortunately the case that facts don’t always win over prejudice. Where I think Mankell is absolutely right is when he talks about how the SD’s success is a symptom of large number of Swedes feeling left out by the mainstream parties:

“People vote against something rather than for it. In this case, people are looking for a scapegoat for their own miseries. It is the unemployed, the ill, those who feel themselves marginalised and cast out, who turn in their powerlessness against the established parties and vote for those who reach out to them. The SD becomes the only decency they find in a political landscape where everything else is hypocritical and forsworn. The SD listens to them. In the SD’s programme they find their own thoughts, their own anger, their own fears.”

Over 10,000 protested against the SD's entry into parliament in Stockholm

It is precisely the policies of Fredrik Reinfeldt and his right-wing coalition, with mass unemployment, privatisation and a further weakening of the welfare state, which have made it easier for the SD to get their message across. The far right’s success almost always comes at times of social hardship and uncertainty, when people are fearful and don’t know who to blame. If the SD’s success is not to be repeated in 2014 then either the government need to radically alter their policies or the left needs to take back control of the debate on jobs and welfare.

Who would have thought this man's party would ever have money problems?

UKIP, the acceptable face of far right politics in the UK, are possibly facing a financial disaster next month.

July is likely to see the judgement of the Supreme Court over the party’s refusal to forfeit over £350,000 of illegal donations. The Electoral Commission says it knows about at least 67 instances of the UKIP breaking the law on donations. Under electoral law, if a party is given over £200 it has to check if the donor is on the electoral register. UKIP failed to do this, despite loads of warnings from the commission.

The party got £367, 697 from these incidents. Most of the money came from a retired bookie and owner of a bathrobe company, Alan Brown, who was not on the register when he gave them several separate donations. In magistrates court, UKIP was ordered to pay back only part of the amount, but the electoral commission has escalated things to the Supreme Court in an attempt to get the full amount forfeited, in which case it would go to the treasury.

As well as this money itself, if UKIP loses the case then they would face millions in legal bills. It could effectively bankrupt the party.

Should we be happy about this? Absolutely we should, because UKIP are the hidden threat we face from the organised far right. Leftfield has reported before on UKIP as a potential seed from which an important party of the radical right could become a major force in British politics. The model for this would be far right racist, anti-Muslim Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who has just gained a big result in the Dutch general election.

Alan Brown hands over an illegal donation

Wilders is the darling of the English and Scottish Defence Leagues, who admire him for his stances such as banning the hijab from all public institutions, calling for the Koran to be banned whilst comparing it to ‘Mein Kampf’, and for the construction of prison camps for Muslims in the Netherlands.

Alan Lake, the shady businessman who bankrolled the rise of the EDL, has said publicly that he’s backing away from his street army of football casuals to focus on finding them a voice in the mainstream political process. He’s doing that by working with UKIP.

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Just a few days into the new coalition Government and it’s clear that the Con Dem’s planned “new politics” are even more undemocratic than the old. Not only have the Lib Dems surrendered PR but their coalition with the Tories now wants to make it harder to hold Parliament to account.

Vince Cable outlines his three priorities - brains, brains, brains.

The Con Dem coalition is planning to change the rules governing the dissolution of Parliament. The status quo is that if 50% plus one MP votes to dissolve the Government, it is forced to resign and call new elections. This happened in 1979 when the Labour Government lost a vote of confidence. The changes the Con Dem’s want to make is to raise the limit, so it has to be 55% of MP’s who vote in no confidence for the Government to be forced to call new elections. This means that a Government could stay in power with only 46% till the next election.

Ah yes, I see what you've done there, very good.

The diagram below outlines the reasoning behind this rule change – if the Liberals broke from the Tories, and allied with all the other parties in calling for new elections they still would not be able to dissolve Parliament, despite having 53% of the seats (which represents 64% of the vote). The only way Parliament can be dissolved is if the Con Dem coalition votes to dissolve it. This effectively means the Tories can stop any dissolution of their Government – and allow the Tories to run a “Zombie Government” which cannot be removed but cannot pass legislation either. This is far from the Zombie Government SSY has long hoped for, a Government based on a fundamental and irreversible shift in brains from the living to the undead. 

The Tories are also planning to change the number of constituencies to improve their electoral prospects, and making things harder for Labour. SSY has argued previously that it is ridiculous many opinion polls would have had Labour come third but still have the most seats in Parliament. the Tories planned reforms however, would further marginalise poorer working class constituencies where turnout is lower and are more likely to vote Labour. The Tories also plan to slash the number of Scottish seats in Westminster to 40, making Scotland’s political voice in the UK even more irrelevant.

On that note, the new fixed term Parliament David Cameron has introduced has decided on a date for the next elections in 5 years (which the Tories would be able to hang on to thanks to the new 55% limit). Fixed term parliaments can be progressive, because they remove the option of a ruling party calling an election later or early for their own advantage. This time however a small oversight appears to have been made – the next General Election has been called for the same day of the Scottish Parliamentary election. That means Scots will be asked to vote for their FPTP MP for Westminster, their FPTP MSP for Holyrood, and their List MSP for Holyrood.

It’s a disaster waiting for happen, a repeat of the 2007 fiasco where hundreds of thousands of votes were spoiled because people confused the vote for the council with the vote for Parliament. It was that disaster which forced them to hold the council elections separately from Holyrood. It now appears that logic has been thrown out the window. Also, it will mean that a Scottish Parliamentary election will take place with the backdrop of a British General election, which will confuse and skew the debate. Expect thousands of Scots to vote Labour for Holyrood who would otherwise not do so to “keep the Tories out” of a Parliament they have no chance of controlling.

Scotland should have it’s own Parliament, with full powers, no Crown involvement, and full PR in an Independent Socialist Republic – where MSP’s would only be paid the average wage of a skilled worker, and both they and the Government would be recallable. That’s a far cry from the undemocratic gerrymandering the Con Dems are trying to introduce.