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When I watched the defeated Ed Balls congratulating his Tory opponent at his constituency count it turned my stomach. Of course Balls behaviour has won plaudits from the liberal glitterati. The Guardian's house Zionist Jonathan Freedland wrote Balls was gracious and winningly human in defeat. What bunkum, what tosh. Only a man without a dog in the race could come up with such nonsense. David Cameron's incoming government will undoubtedly destroy and ruin even more peoples lives, and for an old working class socialist like me the only good Tory is buried safely in a cemetery.*

Balls should have been as mad as hell and silently cursed the woman who defeated him. There was no passion, no fury, no anger, no contempt and hatred for a representative of wicked enemy. Something the English ruling classes have never lacked when defending their own interest. Balls pitiful behavior in defeat epitomised one of the reasons why working class people have lost faith in the British Labour Party.

But then Ed Balls since he left school has always been inside the Establishment tent pissing out, Oxbridge contaminated, brother a Bankster, his first job was as a leader writer on the Financial Times and then he was fast tracked into the heart of the British government, where he acted as Gordon Browns chief adviser for nearly 13 years. He will undoubtedly be found a comfy well paid berth within some financial institution or in academia for favours past rendered. Unlike many of his former constituents who will not fair so well, as they face the full force of the Tory cuts to come which are to be unleashed and passed into law. With incidentally the vote of Andrea Jenkyns, the very woman whom Balls had such kind words for early last Friday morning.

Still Balls is not the worst of the New Labour crop. One only had to see some of those who are standing for the party leadership on TV yesterday dancing on Miliband's grave to understand that.

I could say a great deal about the LP leadership's craven behaviour over the last five years but it's not the time, nor is it for me to say as I'm not a member of the party. What I will say for what it's worth is Ed Miliband is the only LP leader I have ever had even a smidgen of confidence in to do the right thing. I believe he is an honest and decent man who desperatly wanted to turn a new page. Having been a LP apparatchik for many years he learnt to act cautiously, having been surrounded by reactionary people who were out for their own ends. Like the best of the Blairite era advisers Miliband is a first class consigliere but lacked the confidence and experience to be his own man as party leader. After all a Don does not groom a consigliere to take the top job for fear of him stabing him to death.

Ed only really came into his own during the election campaign. By then it was far too late to overcome the Tory poison which has been drip fed by the media over the last five years and should have been rebutted vigorously by every LP member including all MPs. Why this never occurred is the main question party members should now be asking.

As to the future leader that is for the LP membership: myself, I like Andy Burnham. He worked tirelessly with the Hillsborough campaign, is firm on NHS, comes from a working class background, which given the shortage of WC MPs in Westminster would in itself help expose Cameron for the class prejudiced bigot he has proven himself to be.

Myself, I feel the only certainty of the left ever winning a majority is a left of centre electoral pact between the LP, (if the party resist a turn back to New Labour), the Greens, hard left socialists like me, and in 2020 the SNP (if they remain on the social democratic Left. I find Murdoch's support for them very worrying) and maybe even the Lib Dems under a new leader. Needs must I'm afraid. The Green Party leader made some interesting points on this yesterday. For example, if there had been such a pact the LP candidate in my own constituency of Thurrock would have won with a sizable majority. Same goes in many other marginal seats.

By the way I posted what the elections outcome would have been under PR on Organized Rage under Tom McKearney's piece 'The return of the Posh.' It makes shameful reading as it exposes our electoral system for the undemocratic stitch up it is. On the bright side it also shows these islands are not as reactionary a place as the 2015 election result might suggest.

Disappointment result yes but we must resist despair. The working classes have faced far worse from the English ruling classes which David Cameron so epitomises, as the great working class hero Bobby Sands said, Tiocfaidh ár lá (our day will come) and our reward will be the laughter of the children.

That was yesterday what of the future?

Scotland is gone as far as the British LP is concerned and understandably so. When the Labour voting Scots needed the support of the LP most, it failed them dismally and this time they refused to be forgiving. From the Poll Tax to the Bedroom Tax, the party leadership refused to get off their fat arses and place themselves in the same trench as the mass of the Scottish people, preferring to sit on its side, wiggling their toes saying, you don't want to do that, stand down and leave it to us to sort out in the mother of parliament in London.

By not supporting the Scottish working classes in their time of need the LP leadership all but hung up a party political vacancy sign, and one can't blame the SNP for filling the post.

Under Alex Salmond and now Nicola Sturgeon the SNP played their cards astutely. Sensing the political wind in Scotland they placed the party on the social democrat left, following the example of Sinn Féin in Ireland and the Catalan nationalists in Spain. When the SNP placed themselves in the anti austerity, anti cuts trench, while Scottish LP MPs refused to commit themselves to an anti austerity platform, any hope of a revival in the party's fortunes all but evaporated. When the London leadership sent the Blairite Jim Murphy north to head Scottish Labour you could hear the echo of the final nail being driven into the party's coffin across the UK. All that was left was the wake which occurred last Thursday when the SNP won all of Labours seats bar one.

The United Kingdom a failed State.
Slave auction, the fruits of Empire which Cameron's family benefited from.
The UK state began its death throws way back in 1916 Dublin with the Easter Rising, when Irish Republicans and their socialist comrades led by Jim Connolly decided to wait no longer while the Irish Independence Party went to Westminster to pester the British government, cap in hand, for their nations freedom from English tyranny.

Today Scotland is on the same road although hopefully they will not have to resort to arm struggle to achieve their aims.

The UK today is a failed State in all but name, how can it be a united kingdom when the peoples of one of the participating nations vote enmasse for an independence party and almost 50% of NI do the same. The UK is held together by the will of the English ruling class alone, and their co conspirators within the media, city of London institutions and the military and political elites.

The British economy is a basket case only kept afloat by the spin of the city of London's roulette wheels and the government's quantitative easing when they create electronic money that did not exist before. The UK's manufacturing base has been in free fall since 1979 and it has the second worst productivity record of the G7 leading Western industrial nations.

Its democracy is a total and absolute sham. The second parliamentary law making chamber is unelected, a mockery of the democratic process. As is its hereditary head of State. Its electoral system is archaic and unrepresentative, unfit for purpose. In last Thursday's General Election UKIP, the Greens and Lib Dems gained 25% of votes cast, yet gained only 10 seats between them, while under the fairer PR system used by our EU neighbours they would have received well over 100 seats.

Indeed the Westminster parliament is about as near as one gets to a rotten borough in modern times. The working classes are all but excluded from the levers of power, which are almost totally dominated by the upper middle class who make up only a tiny percentage of the population as a whole. Big business and billionaires have open access to senior government ministers at the drop of a hat, political corruption is the order of the day. Former government ministers of all parties move effortlessly on retirement or after defeat at the polls into well paid positions within the very same corporations they should have been regulating whilst in office.

Within a year of leaving office a former PM became a multi millionaires having been given a number of retainers from the very Banksters and mult nationals who helped bankrupt the nation's exchequer in 2008 and hardly a hair was turned.

While ordinary folk are left to their own devises to solve their grievances, often ending up on the wrong side of the law, being battered off the streets by an over militarised police force, the secret State has been given free rein to spy on whom ever it chooses.  CCTV cameras are on almost every city street. The judicial system is corrupt, stuffed full of class prejudiced public school and Oxbridge educated judges and barristers.

The glue which previous held the UK together was the British Empire and then the common experiences of WW2 which resulted in the creation of the NHS and Welfare State. Since 1979 with the rise of Thatcherism and Neo-liberalism the whole entity of the state has withered and weakened. The so called political elite cling to the past like a limpet mine stuck to a rusty archaic hulk of a ship. Today its only amongst the ruling classes, whose forebears incidentally benefited most from their bloody and grubby empire, who still believe its memory is worth preserving and how they persevere in doing so.

In the last five years they have celebrated WW1, the most pointless and bloody conflagration in British and European history. The UK monarchy a pivotal part of the empire is still portrayed almost daily as an example to all, despite being one of the most dysfunctional and greedy families in the land. Now Cameron has been returned to office he intends to celebrate General Arthur Wellesley's defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, something which is regarded throughout the civilised world as a reactionary setback for human kind.

Mick Hall surveys the political landscape in post-general election Britain. Mick Hall is a veteran Marxist activist and trade unionist who blogs at Organized Rage.


The Scots have chosen its high time they moved on, ceased looking back at the past with rheumy eyes and become a free nation once again. Despite the barriers this will place on a socialist government being elected in England and Wales one can only wish them well.

Next. The future role of the political left in England and Wales.

  * A. Bevan quote


The People Have Spoken, The Fucking Bastards! Where Do We Go From Here?





When I watched the defeated Ed Balls congratulating his Tory opponent at his constituency count it turned my stomach. Of course Balls behaviour has won plaudits from the liberal glitterati. The Guardian's house Zionist Jonathan Freedland wrote Balls was gracious and winningly human in defeat. What bunkum, what tosh. Only a man without a dog in the race could come up with such nonsense. David Cameron's incoming government will undoubtedly destroy and ruin even more peoples lives, and for an old working class socialist like me the only good Tory is buried safely in a cemetery.*

Balls should have been as mad as hell and silently cursed the woman who defeated him. There was no passion, no fury, no anger, no contempt and hatred for a representative of wicked enemy. Something the English ruling classes have never lacked when defending their own interest. Balls pitiful behavior in defeat epitomised one of the reasons why working class people have lost faith in the British Labour Party.

But then Ed Balls since he left school has always been inside the Establishment tent pissing out, Oxbridge contaminated, brother a Bankster, his first job was as a leader writer on the Financial Times and then he was fast tracked into the heart of the British government, where he acted as Gordon Browns chief adviser for nearly 13 years. He will undoubtedly be found a comfy well paid berth within some financial institution or in academia for favours past rendered. Unlike many of his former constituents who will not fair so well, as they face the full force of the Tory cuts to come which are to be unleashed and passed into law. With incidentally the vote of Andrea Jenkyns, the very woman whom Balls had such kind words for early last Friday morning.

Still Balls is not the worst of the New Labour crop. One only had to see some of those who are standing for the party leadership on TV yesterday dancing on Miliband's grave to understand that.

I could say a great deal about the LP leadership's craven behaviour over the last five years but it's not the time, nor is it for me to say as I'm not a member of the party. What I will say for what it's worth is Ed Miliband is the only LP leader I have ever had even a smidgen of confidence in to do the right thing. I believe he is an honest and decent man who desperatly wanted to turn a new page. Having been a LP apparatchik for many years he learnt to act cautiously, having been surrounded by reactionary people who were out for their own ends. Like the best of the Blairite era advisers Miliband is a first class consigliere but lacked the confidence and experience to be his own man as party leader. After all a Don does not groom a consigliere to take the top job for fear of him stabing him to death.

Ed only really came into his own during the election campaign. By then it was far too late to overcome the Tory poison which has been drip fed by the media over the last five years and should have been rebutted vigorously by every LP member including all MPs. Why this never occurred is the main question party members should now be asking.

As to the future leader that is for the LP membership: myself, I like Andy Burnham. He worked tirelessly with the Hillsborough campaign, is firm on NHS, comes from a working class background, which given the shortage of WC MPs in Westminster would in itself help expose Cameron for the class prejudiced bigot he has proven himself to be.

Myself, I feel the only certainty of the left ever winning a majority is a left of centre electoral pact between the LP, (if the party resist a turn back to New Labour), the Greens, hard left socialists like me, and in 2020 the SNP (if they remain on the social democratic Left. I find Murdoch's support for them very worrying) and maybe even the Lib Dems under a new leader. Needs must I'm afraid. The Green Party leader made some interesting points on this yesterday. For example, if there had been such a pact the LP candidate in my own constituency of Thurrock would have won with a sizable majority. Same goes in many other marginal seats.

By the way I posted what the elections outcome would have been under PR on Organized Rage under Tom McKearney's piece 'The return of the Posh.' It makes shameful reading as it exposes our electoral system for the undemocratic stitch up it is. On the bright side it also shows these islands are not as reactionary a place as the 2015 election result might suggest.

Disappointment result yes but we must resist despair. The working classes have faced far worse from the English ruling classes which David Cameron so epitomises, as the great working class hero Bobby Sands said, Tiocfaidh ár lá (our day will come) and our reward will be the laughter of the children.

That was yesterday what of the future?

Scotland is gone as far as the British LP is concerned and understandably so. When the Labour voting Scots needed the support of the LP most, it failed them dismally and this time they refused to be forgiving. From the Poll Tax to the Bedroom Tax, the party leadership refused to get off their fat arses and place themselves in the same trench as the mass of the Scottish people, preferring to sit on its side, wiggling their toes saying, you don't want to do that, stand down and leave it to us to sort out in the mother of parliament in London.

By not supporting the Scottish working classes in their time of need the LP leadership all but hung up a party political vacancy sign, and one can't blame the SNP for filling the post.

Under Alex Salmond and now Nicola Sturgeon the SNP played their cards astutely. Sensing the political wind in Scotland they placed the party on the social democrat left, following the example of Sinn Féin in Ireland and the Catalan nationalists in Spain. When the SNP placed themselves in the anti austerity, anti cuts trench, while Scottish LP MPs refused to commit themselves to an anti austerity platform, any hope of a revival in the party's fortunes all but evaporated. When the London leadership sent the Blairite Jim Murphy north to head Scottish Labour you could hear the echo of the final nail being driven into the party's coffin across the UK. All that was left was the wake which occurred last Thursday when the SNP won all of Labours seats bar one.

The United Kingdom a failed State.
Slave auction, the fruits of Empire which Cameron's family benefited from.
The UK state began its death throws way back in 1916 Dublin with the Easter Rising, when Irish Republicans and their socialist comrades led by Jim Connolly decided to wait no longer while the Irish Independence Party went to Westminster to pester the British government, cap in hand, for their nations freedom from English tyranny.

Today Scotland is on the same road although hopefully they will not have to resort to arm struggle to achieve their aims.

The UK today is a failed State in all but name, how can it be a united kingdom when the peoples of one of the participating nations vote enmasse for an independence party and almost 50% of NI do the same. The UK is held together by the will of the English ruling class alone, and their co conspirators within the media, city of London institutions and the military and political elites.

The British economy is a basket case only kept afloat by the spin of the city of London's roulette wheels and the government's quantitative easing when they create electronic money that did not exist before. The UK's manufacturing base has been in free fall since 1979 and it has the second worst productivity record of the G7 leading Western industrial nations.

Its democracy is a total and absolute sham. The second parliamentary law making chamber is unelected, a mockery of the democratic process. As is its hereditary head of State. Its electoral system is archaic and unrepresentative, unfit for purpose. In last Thursday's General Election UKIP, the Greens and Lib Dems gained 25% of votes cast, yet gained only 10 seats between them, while under the fairer PR system used by our EU neighbours they would have received well over 100 seats.

Indeed the Westminster parliament is about as near as one gets to a rotten borough in modern times. The working classes are all but excluded from the levers of power, which are almost totally dominated by the upper middle class who make up only a tiny percentage of the population as a whole. Big business and billionaires have open access to senior government ministers at the drop of a hat, political corruption is the order of the day. Former government ministers of all parties move effortlessly on retirement or after defeat at the polls into well paid positions within the very same corporations they should have been regulating whilst in office.

Within a year of leaving office a former PM became a multi millionaires having been given a number of retainers from the very Banksters and mult nationals who helped bankrupt the nation's exchequer in 2008 and hardly a hair was turned.

While ordinary folk are left to their own devises to solve their grievances, often ending up on the wrong side of the law, being battered off the streets by an over militarised police force, the secret State has been given free rein to spy on whom ever it chooses.  CCTV cameras are on almost every city street. The judicial system is corrupt, stuffed full of class prejudiced public school and Oxbridge educated judges and barristers.

The glue which previous held the UK together was the British Empire and then the common experiences of WW2 which resulted in the creation of the NHS and Welfare State. Since 1979 with the rise of Thatcherism and Neo-liberalism the whole entity of the state has withered and weakened. The so called political elite cling to the past like a limpet mine stuck to a rusty archaic hulk of a ship. Today its only amongst the ruling classes, whose forebears incidentally benefited most from their bloody and grubby empire, who still believe its memory is worth preserving and how they persevere in doing so.

In the last five years they have celebrated WW1, the most pointless and bloody conflagration in British and European history. The UK monarchy a pivotal part of the empire is still portrayed almost daily as an example to all, despite being one of the most dysfunctional and greedy families in the land. Now Cameron has been returned to office he intends to celebrate General Arthur Wellesley's defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, something which is regarded throughout the civilised world as a reactionary setback for human kind.

Mick Hall surveys the political landscape in post-general election Britain. Mick Hall is a veteran Marxist activist and trade unionist who blogs at Organized Rage.


The Scots have chosen its high time they moved on, ceased looking back at the past with rheumy eyes and become a free nation once again. Despite the barriers this will place on a socialist government being elected in England and Wales one can only wish them well.

Next. The future role of the political left in England and Wales.

  * A. Bevan quote


British general election 2015 Organized Rage

2 comments:

  1. AM9:29 AM, May 16, 2015

    Ed Miliband was never a patch on his father. There is nothing in this piece that would persuade me to vote Labour. Rearranging deckchairs on a sinking ship. New boat needed. What it is to be I refrain from, citing the excuse that I am not a ship designer! The logic of this approach is that when the choice becomes between the English Defence League and the British National Party, we must vote for the least worse. I prefer neither.

    ReplyDelete
  2. marty9:41 AM, May 16, 2015

    Yes a great read Mick,it is apparent that the voting system in Britain is in dire need of a total overhaul,the SNP have played an honest and straight pitch ,they deserve the result,is Murdoch just recognising a winning formula and latching on,as for quisling $inn £eind being anti austerity ,well a cara that remains to be seen.I for one wont be holding my breath.

    ReplyDelete

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