The Madness of King Trump

Rambling speeches, delusions of grandeur, unhinged threats to friend and foe alike,,,and now a demand for “unconditional surrender” as his offensive against Iran falters in the first week of open combat. The Iranians have crippled the American military network across the Middle East, cut off the Persian Gulf to all Western shipping while giving the Israelis a taste of their own medicine with daily drone and missile strikes on Tel Aviv and other cities across the Zionist entity. America and Israel’s “achievements” so far have been the killing of 165 school-kids in an air-raid last week and the sinking of an Iranian frigate in the Indian Ocean.
Trump’s team initially believed that they could wipe out the Iranian leadership and force the Islamic Republic to beg for mercy in a matter of a few days. Their treacherous attack in the midst of negotiations to end the crisis neither shocked nor awed the Iranians. They killed some but not all the Iranian leaders. They destroyed some but not all of Iran’s stockpile of drones and missiles.
The Iranians, enraged at the death of their Supreme Leader and many others in the leadership vow to fight on no matter what the Americans or Israelis throw at them. Their Arab allies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, north Yemen and the Palestinian resistance are joining in to help them. The Iranians have cut off the Persian Gulf and the Yemenis are blocking the Red Sea to all Western shipping. The spot oil price is soaring. The stock markets of the imperialist world are jittery amid fears that a massive hike in the price of oil on the open market will trigger another global slump. The longer the war goes on the more likely that will be, And even the Americans are now talking about a five or six week campaign.
In Britain the Tories and the Faragists are predictably rooting for a Trump triumph. So are Starmer & Co and the ageing Blairites he surrounds himself with. Jeremy Corbyn warns that “we cannot let Keir Starmer drag this country into another illegal war. That’s why I tabled a Bill to require Parliamentary approval for the foreign use of British bases” – a view supported by the Greens, the Bennite rump on the Labour back-benches and beyond.
Starmer’s bid to allow the Americans to use British bases for their war effort has been blocked by four Cabinet ministers, led by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.  
Starmer is still trying to appease The Donald and the feudal Arab oil princes who invest in Britain but depend on American guns to keep them on their thrones. But wiser counsel has prevailed in Europe. None of the members of the European Union, apart from the Baltic States which are little more than American protectorates, have shown any enthusiasm to join the Trump crusade against Iran. And Spain’s social-democratic government has taken a more principled position, refusing to allow the United States to use its military bases for attacks on Iran and condemning the strikes as unjustified and outside international law.
And this is what Britain must also do. The mass movement, the millions who’ve marched for Palestine are now demonstrating to stop any British involvement in imperialist aggression, stop the bombing and end the cycle of violence that threatens to plunge the entire world into flames. Stop bombing Iran! Stop Trump’s war!

Gaza: What next?

The guns have fallen silent and the Palestinians are returning to what  was once their homes in the Gaza Strip. The hundreds of international volunteers in the Global Sumud flotilla who were interned after their vessels were seized in international waters by the Israeli navy have all been released. The relatives of the Israeli hostages and the Palestinian prisoners look forward to long-awaited re-unions with their loved ones. And Western politicians and Arab leaders talk about a new civil government that will replace the Hamas administration after the Israelis have gone which will be the first step towards ending the conflict in the Middle East. But will any of this actually happen?
Well the cease-fire will hold at least until the prisoner exchange is over. After that it’s anyone’s guess. Few Palestinians trust Netanyahu to keep his word.The Israeli leader didn’t want a cease-fire. Nor did he want to make a grovelling public apology to the Qataris. But he did what he was told. Because ultimately it all depends on Donald Trump, who has shown over the past few days who really calls the shots in Tel Aviv. But what do the Americans want?
Trump’s 20 point peace plan may be a vague collection of platitudes but the “settlement” the Trump team drew up during The Donald’s first term is pretty precise. Their ‘Abraham Accords’ two-state solution would see the Israelis retaining all their West Bank settlements in exchange for worthless desert in Israel that would be attached to the Gaza Strip and what’s left of the Arab West Bank for the establishment of a powerless  Palestinian ‘state’ whose independence would barely stretch beyond that of an Indian ‘reservation’ in the USA. 
But they can’t crush Arab resistance. They couldn’t stifle the global anti-war movement that called for an immediate end to Israeli aggression. The voice of the oppressed, the millions that support the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs has swept the world.
Now more than ever, our pressure on the British government matters. The government must stop arming Israel and instead use every possible means to facilitate immediate access to humanitarian aid and push any temporary ceasefire into a lasting deal that restores the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs that the world has long recognised.

Trump trumped again

Donald Trump has once again failed to get the Nobel Peace Prize he has so long coveted. It has instead gone to a Venezuelan opposition politician whose only merit is that she is a reactionary leader and a staunch supporter of Israel who believes in “popular capitalism”.
This rubbishy prize, with few honourable exceptions, has long been the preserve of imperialist politicians and prominent agents of imperialism. The anti-communist Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov won it in 1975. The reactionary Polish union leader Lech Walesa got it for his counter-revolutionary campaign in 1983. Gorbachov was similarly rewarded for his treachery in 1990. This year was no exception.
María Corina Machado’s “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela” includes supporting imperialist sanctions against her own country and calling for foreign intervention to remove Venezuelan President Maduro on humanitarian grounds.

After the ball is over

 “Many the hopes that have vanished, after the ball” goes the old song – much like Keir Starmer’s pipe dreams about the Trump state visit this week. Two days have gone in a flash. Donald Trump’s been and gone. The Donald was treated to an unaccustomed right royal pageant at Windsor Castle which no doubt went down well with his MAGA constituency back home. Starmer however got nothing out of the visit – which was entirely predictable to everyone apart from the sycophants and flatterers that the Labour leader surrounds himself with these days.
They say Starmer and his clapped-out old Blairite advisers genuinely believed that the American president could be wooed by a red-carpet meeting with the King into cutting tariffs and making other trade concessions to the UK at any given time. Openly talking about Trump as if he was a gullible, vain old fool wasn’t such a good idea. Revealing your hand (and it was a very weak one) in advance to the mainstream media for all to see only compounded the folly. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. This, after all, the government that appointed Peter Mandelson ambassador to Washington in the first place... 

There may be trouble ahead

The public spat between Zarah Sultana and the other five MPs in the Independent Alliance doesn’t augur well for the new Corbynista party that still lacks a name. Though the rift is simply over who should manage the membership system and bank accounts of the new party it clearly reflects underlying differences between those who want a conventional left-social democratic party and Corbyn’s kitchen cabinet that seems to hanker after the sort of rally party like the old Gaullist movement in France or the mass movements of Ghana’s Nkrumah and Nasser in Egypt that were models for much of the Global South in the 1950s and 60s.
With support for Labour and the Conservatives crumbling Reform UK is waiting to pick up the pieces. The Faragists have deliberately stoked up the flames over asylum-seekers. They will have no qualms in using the racist rabble that we saw march through the streets of London last week to pave their way to power.
There’s clearly deep divisions within the corridors of power. Though the Tories have traditionally always been the chosen political instrument of the ruling class Brexit has gone badly wrong for them. Boris Johnson and Madame Truss burned their bridges with Franco-German imperialism and their pivot to American imperialism failed. Sunak and Starmer fared no better – unable to negotiate some sort of associate relationship with the European Union or deal successfully with the truculent Trump administration in the United States.
Though it has served them well in the past Labour will never replace the Tories as the governing party of the bourgeoisie as long as it retains its organic links with the trade union movement. But neither will Reform. Though many Tory activists have gone over to Farage members of the old guard are few and far between in the Reform camp. And as far as the ruling class is concerned Farage remains an outsider – even in the City of London where he made his money in the first place.
They’ve got to put one of their own back at the helm of the Conservative & Unionist party while at the same time maintaining the credibility of Labour to contain the Corbynistas in parliament and on the street. That cuts Starmer out as well. It’s a difficult equation. But
for us we simply have to defend the principled line of socialist advance throughout the labour and anti-war movement. So let’s face the music... 

North to Alaska

An American jet escort for Putin’s plane. The red carpet. A ride in  Trump’s presidential car appropriately called “The Beast” and the red carpet rolled out as the world’s media swooped down on Alaska last week for the Trump-Putin summit that some believed would end the Ukraine war. But it didn’t. And though plenty of progress was clearly made in the talks at the American air-base in Anchorage there was, as Trump put it, “no deal until there's a deal”.
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met for about three hours in the American Arctic for what Trump described as very "productive" and Putin said were very "constructive" talks.
Putin: the man the imperialist media branded a “war criminal”. The leader of a country subjected to a harsh Western economic blockade was now being greeted like an old friend by the man that the bourgeois media still call the leader of the “free world”. But that world – the world of imperialism and exploitation was never free. And though the current leader of the United States wants to continue exploiting and plundering its resources, he certainly doesn’t wants to rule it.
Overall the atmosphere in Anchorage was one of equality, pragmatism, and friendliness. Despite the arrest warrant against Putin issued by the International Criminal Court, Trump extended a historic welcome to the Russian leader with warm handshakes on American soil. They even travelled together in the same car – gestures that conveyed Trump’s respect for Putin and signalled disapproval of the way previous European and US administrations handled relations with Russia.
"The 'Trump-Putin meeting' was neither a case of each side simply talking past the other, nor did it achieve complete alignment," says Zhao Long, deputy director of the Institute of Global Governance at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies. "It resembled a delicate puzzle, with both sides attempting to fit the core demand for a Ukraine ceasefire into the larger picture of normalising US-Russia relations." Zhao Long added that both leaders sought to avoid a perception of failure, so under the framework of low expectations, even minor consensus points were presented as significant progress to lay the groundwork for further dialogue. 
The Chinese academician argues that Washington and Moscow will continue to use the cease-fire issue to advance normalisation of ties, though a decade of mistrust, entrenched confrontation, and conflicting global interests means the process faces many obstacles.
Nevertheless the Western diplomatic embargo on Russia has been broken and while the summit ended without a deal on the Ukraine crisis it clearly has laid down the groundwork for future dialogue to pave the path toward peace in Ukraine.

Trump’s big day

The Trump administration launched a global trade war this week with a tranche of tariffs on most countries – including the United Kingdom. Trump announced a 10 per cent baseline tariff on all imports wherever they come from and higher rates on a number of countries whom he deemed the “worst offenders” in terms of imposing tariffs on American goods. Britain is in the 10 per cent general band. Even the uninhabited Heard and McDonald islands, a remote Australian outpost near Antarctica, is on the basic rate – even though the population consists largely of seals and penguins.
A few,  devoid of any meaningful trade with the USA like Belarus, Cuba, Democratic Korea, Iran and the Russian Federation, get off scot-free. Others were not so lucky. Cambodia tops the list at 49 per cent and Vietnam is second on 46. People’s China gets 34 per cent, pushing their overall tariff to a stomping 54 per cent,
Tariffs are used by the capitalists to boost domestic manufacturers and punish those from other countries whose interests conflict with theirs. A tariff is essentially a tax paid by companies who import goods from the targeted countries. This is then normally passed on to the consumer in higher prices. The Trump administration seeks to “Make America Great Again”, largely at the expense of its own allies, and boost American manufacturing through tariffs and protectionism while using secret diplomacy and economic blackmail to achieve its goals. 
By turning trade into an over-simplistic tit-for-tat game, the Trump administration is dismantling a global trade system based on efficiency, specialisation and mutual benefit and hurting both the US economy and the global economy at large. The idea of “reciprocal tariffs” is particularly misguided. The principle of comparative advantage allows countries to focus on what they do best and trade for the rest. Ignoring this leads to economic inefficiencies. 
Despite Trump's claim that higher tariffs will help bring in revenue for the government and revitalise American manufacturing, economists have warned that such measures will push up prices for US consumers and businesses, disrupt global trade, and hurt global economy.
European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen called Trump's tariffs a "major blow to the world economy"  while People’s China promises counter-measures. China “will take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests" a Chinese Foreign Office spokesperson told the media in Beijing this week saying that there is no winner in a trade or tariff war, and that protectionism offers no solution.
On the White House lawn Trump said this was “Liberation Day” holding up a board showing the rates he was imposing on different countries throughout the world. He said a “golden age” was coming back the United States.
That wasn’t the view in the money markets of New York and the City of London as shares of the multinational companies tumbled when they heard the news. Crude oil, Big Tech stocks and even the going rate for the US dollar against other currencies fell. Even gold, which hit records recently as investors sought something safer to own, has dipped.
As big brands lose their value in early trading and shares crash on Wall Street many fear that far from heralding a new era Trump’s draconian protectionist measures will simply trigger a trade war and another global capitalist slump.

Dream on Starmer!

The way Starmer tells it wages are growing faster than prices. “Jobs up. Inflation down. Interest rates down. NHS waiting lists down. Houses and infrastructure unblocked. Free breakfast clubs rolling out. National Living Wage increasing. National Minimum Wage increasing. Defence spending increased. Two million more NHS appointments delivered. Housebuilding to be at the highest level in 40 years. People to be £500 a year better off. The Tories blocked change for Britain. My Labour government is delivering it”. The reality on the street is another story. Homelessness, poverty and despair.

The Labour government wants to slash £6.4 billion from benefits spending by the end of the decade by making it harder to claim personal independent payments and cutting universal credit. The number of children living in poverty in the UK has reached a record high of almost 4.5 million. Charities say cuts to disability and incapacity benefits announced by the Labour Government will “push more disabled people into poverty and worsen people’s health”. Government estimates suggest welfare cuts will plunge thousands more children below the poverty line by the end of the decade. Oxfam, for example, said the figures were “as damning as they are heartbreaking”. Silvia Galandini from the charity said “it is morally repugnant that children, disabled people and carers are the ones who are taking the hit. It is unconscionable that the government is cutting social security while wilfully ignoring the huge potential revenue of a tiny tax on the super-rich, one that is overwhelmingly backed by the British public”. 
We’re in for another round of austerity – to pay for more missiles and nukes and above all to prop up end-game capitalism in Britain and the rest of Europe.
Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Independent bloc in Parliament says people did not elect a Labour government to push 50,000 more children into poverty. But “ever since this Labour government was elected, they have chosen to balance the books off the backs of the poor”.
Meanwhile Starmer and the Brussels cabal are running round Europe promoting their “coalition of the willing” in a last ditch bid to get a seat at the peace conference where the future of Ukraine will be decided. But as far as the Americans and Russians are concerned there’s only going to be two seats at the bargaining table. And they’re reserved for Trump and Putin.

Who killed Kennedy?

Well we all know it was Lee Harvey Oswald. The real question is why? Gunned down soon after his arrest Oswald took that secret to his grave. 
The story has been retold in a legion of books, documentaries and Hollywood movies over the years. We’ve all heard about the “grassy knoll”, the “missing witness” and the “second shooter”. But we still don’t know all the answers.
If it wasn’t the action of deranged madman we have to ask who actually benefitted from Kennedy’s death. If it was a conspiracy it was clearly one hundred per cent successful. Kennedy was killed and the assassin silenced two days later.
Many hoped that the release of the last batch of secret Kennedy files by the Trump administration would finally end the speculation around the assassination of JFK. But they didn’t. The documents only seemed to confirm the report of the official 1964 Warren Commission that concluded that President Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald and that Oswald acted entirely alone. 
Whether the assassination was the act of a lone sniper – and that’s certainly the view of Donald Trump  – or indeed part of a wider plot will nevertheless continue to fire the countless conspiracy theories that claim that vested capitalist interests, the Mafia, the CIA, Castro or even the Soviets were behind John F Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on 22 November 1963. 

Between a rock and a hard place

Keir Starmer’s off to Washington next week to win support for a European plan to send 30,000 British and European Union troops to Ukraine as “peacekeepers” if and when a truce is agreed to end the Ukraine war. Though this force would allegedly be there to guarantee Ukraine’s independence its real role would be to preserve the British and European Union’s economic interests in a post-war Ukraine that Donald Trump clearly sees as no more than an American protectorate.
The war-lobby that reflects the most venal and aggressive sections of the British ruling class has gone into top gear with Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat worthies all urging Starmer to “stand up” to Donald Trump. The Atlanticists who used to hail American presidents as leaders of the “free world” have closed ranks with those who look to an alliance with Franco-German imperialism to bleat on about “betrayal”.
“It's time for Starmer to stand up for Britain and our allies in Europe” says Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey. Former Tory defence secretary Gavin Williamson says that “we cannot let fake news and a false narrative become accepted. That has to be rebuffed at every moment. And if that causes some people offence, well, that's their problem”. And Tony Blair’s former spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, calls Donald Trump a “pathological liar, a narcissist” who is “concerned only about himself, his wealth and his power” in the Independent last week.
None of this is likely to sway those now at the helm of US imperialism. The initiative to start high-level talks between the Russian and American foreign ministers  in Saudi Arabia was not the whim of The Donald or a tiny clique of American oligarchs but a decision that reflects the needs and demands of the wing of the American ruling class that wants to cut its losses in Ukraine to enable them to strengthen their grip over the Middle East in their bid to control the entire global energy market. 
In reality there never was a “free world” and the “special relationship” the British bourgeoisie upheld was largely a figment of their own imagination. They feign suprise at Trump’s moves to build detente with the Russian Federation but the Trump camp made no secret of this in the run-up to the US presidential election last year. The simple fact is that Starmer and the rest of the pack in Europe didn’t think Trump would win. 
As we’ve said before secret diplomacy is rarely the best pathway to peace. But both the Russian and American sides are clearly working towards a win-win agreement over Ukraine. If that ends the war with a peace settlement that recognises the rights of the Crimeans, southern Ukrainians and the people of the Donbas to live in the Russian Federation well and good. It will clearly benefit the Ukrainian and Russian people.

Gaza: What next?

The Gaza ceasefire agreed this week has brought relief to the long-suffering Palestinian Arabs in the beleaguered Palestinian enclave and hope at last to the relatives of the prisoners held on both sides whose fate hinged on the success of the talks in the capital of the Arab state of Qatar. It remains to be seen if the Israelis honour the agreement they signed up to in Doha. But it’s difficult to see how they go back on their word over the truce that was pushed through on the insistence of an emissary of President-elect Donald Trump who returns to the White House on 20th January.
The deal – a total Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in return for a prisoner exchange – is essentially the one Hamas agreed to last May to end the fighting. Endorsed at the United Nations the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government both supported it – indeed they said the plan had orginated in Israel in the first place. But it was just a ruse to stall for time and divert world public opinion while the Israelis assassinated Hamas leaders and pushed on with their plan to re-occupy the Strip and drive out most, if not all, of the Palestinians Arabs to make room for Zionist settlers.
UN resolutions provide the basis for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. First of all Israel must totally withdraw from all the occupied territories seized in 1967, including Arab East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights. The Palestinians must be allowed to establish a state of their own on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinian refugees whose homes are now in Israel must be allowed to return or, if they so wish, be paid appropriate compensation in exchange. And all states in the region, including Israel, should have internationally agreed and recognised frontiers guaranteed by all the Great Powers.
Joe Biden fully approved of Israeli aggression. When he met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Israel last year he said "I don't believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist". But American support for Israel began long before Biden. When the Zionist state was proclaimed in 1948. When the first Arab-Israeli war began and around a million Palestinians were driven out of their homes to make way for Zionist settlement.
Israel is nothing without the United States. It is a pawn of the United States.The Zionist leaders strut the world posing as independent politicians. But US imperialism provides the military and economic support that keeps Israel going. The country is an American protectorate and their leaders will ultimately do whatever America wants. 
Trump, in turn, loudly proclaims his own support for the Zionist entity. He also wants to keep the oil princes sweet. The section of the US ruling class that he leads wants to maintain the American presence in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf to build a new military bloc to threaten Iran and pave the way for US imperialism’s total control of the global energy market. Trump and his cohorts may well believe that an end to the fighting is enough to keep the feudal Arabs on side. But the Palestinians, and indeed, virtually the entire world outside the United States want to see a final end to the crisis.
 As for Netanyahu – he wants to end his days covered in glory as the man who built “Greater Israel” and brought the Palestinians to their knees. But he’s failed on all counts. Whatever happens next this is their victory – not his.

Trump takes centre stage

Two weeks still to go to Inauguration Day but Donald Trump’s already been grabbing the headlines urging Canadians to join the United States and threatening to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal, which he says is now under Chinese control. While few take his pantomime threats seriously it’s amusing to see venal British and European politicians, so used to licking the boots of Uncle Sam, on the receiving end of American abuse for a change.
They turned a blind eye to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They egged on the proxy war against Russia and crippling sanctions on China. Now they’re recoiling in horror at The Donald mouthing off against his own allies. Now they know that “Making America Great Again” can only happen at their expense.
The Trump team are already talking about resuming the dialogue with Democratic Korea and floating proposals to end the Ukraine war which go some way to meeting the legitimate demands of the Russian Federation. We can only hope that this will lead to serious negotiations to normalise US relations with the DPR Korea and end the war in eastern Europe. 
Trump says he’ll end the war in Ukraine at a stroke when he’s back at the helm. But we’ve heard it all before over Korea. Though he promised much when he was last in the White House he still remained a prisoner of the most aggressive elements of the American ruling class. What Trump says and what he can or actually does do is another matter altogether. 

Meanwhile...

...Elon Musk, the South African born tech tycoon said to be the richest man in the world, has clearly got some time on his hands. Not content with the prospect of a key role in the new Trump administration, he’s now calling on Nigel Farage to stand down as leader of the Reform Party and scheming to get rid of Keir Starmer before the next general election. 
Musk is often called a “kingmaker” in the bourgeois media of the United States: possibly by some unaware of the tragic fate of the first man to bear that mantle – Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, who was killed in 1471 during the feudal struggle for the throne known as the War of the Roses. 
Musk is much like George Soros, another immensely rich American, who used his money to finance anti-communist movements in eastern Europe in the 1980s and prop up the venal pro-NATO regimes that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the European people’s democracies in 1991. Soros, a supporter of the American Democrats, poses as a philanthropist. Musk, who likes to be thought of as a “libertarian”, is a Trump Republican. But their common underlying philosophy is simply that of end days capitalism and inherited wealth.
Now Musk can say and do what he likes in the United States – he became an American citizen in 2002 – but poking his nose into our affairs is totally unacceptable. 

Trump redux

The Second Coming of Donald Trump has come as no surprise to many on the American left who warned that the Harris camp ignored their traditional core voters at their peril. Workers and the ethnic minority communities that had long supported the Democrats in the past wanted to see plans to curb unemployment, halt the slump in living standards and an end to the slaughter in Gaza. All they got were the usual platitudes – the dismal tune of the dying Biden administration that had nothing to offer apart from more misery and more war. Some just sat on their hands or voted for protest candidates on Tuesday. Some even voted for Trump.
Not that we can expect much from Trump judging by the people who surround him. More tax breaks for the rich, more curbs on the unions and civil rights in general and sweeping tariffs that could plunge the rest of the capitalist world into deeper recession.
Much of this will be approved by the ruling circles in the United States. Most are not at all troubled by the return of the maverick property speculator turned politician who wiil be back in the White House in January. Some, however, are concerned at Trump’s “transactional” foreign policy stand which they call “isolationism” even though this reflects a long-standing trend within the Republican party. During the Nixon era this type of diplomatic bargaining was called “reciprocity” at Soviet-American summits that traded-off nuclear arms limitations with spheres of influence in what was then called the “Third World”. The Soviet Union and its allies were the “Second World” but the “First World” was never actually called that. It was the “Free World” led by the United States, the “land of the free” and the home of the “American dream” that we were all supposed to aspire to.
The real American dream, world domination, was only spelt out after the fall of the Soviet Union. The most venal and aggressive sections of the American ruling class called it the “new world order”. The deep state that pulls the strings across party lines in the United States launched a series of “regime change” wars and “colour revolutions” to bring down all those who stood in their way. But it didn’t quite work out the way that they planned.
Yugoslavia has gone, Libya is in ruins but the American attempt to overthrow the popular front government in Syria has failed. The Americans have been driven out of Afghanistan and they’ve lost control of Iraq. The wars in Palestine and Ukraine are going against them and the BRICs group, which includes Russia and People’s China, is fast becoming the new focus for economic development throughout the Global South.
Kamala Harris’ Democrats still believe in the ‘new world order’, though they now prefer to call it “globalisation”. Trump, on the other hand, represents circles in the Republican Party who want to cut back US military expenditure in Europe and north-east Asia so that they can concentrate on controlling the global energy market by taking over the entire Middle East and restoring US imperialism’s hegemony over south and central America,
Trump says he’ll end the war in Ukraine at a stroke when he’s back at the helm. But we’ve heard it all before over Korea. Though he promised much when he was last in the White House he still remained a prisoner of the most aggressive elements of the American ruling class. No one knows if it’s going to be different this time round.

Looking for America

There’s bound to be some red-faces at the Labour Party HQ these days. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea after-all to send Labour Party activists to America to help the Harris campaign telling them to “help our friends across the pond elect their first female president” and exhorting them to “show those Yanks how to win elections!”.
Everybody knows this was just another cheap stunt by Starmer & Co to ingratiate themselves with the Democrats in the run-up to the November presidential election in the United States. Wherever they go the hundred or so Labour volunteers are hardly going to tip the balance in favour of Kamala Harris. But the pompous Labour emails that were inevitably leaked played directly into the hands of the Trump team.
The Trump campaign’s lawyer, Gary Lawkowski, says the donation of time and services by British volunteers amounts to “illegal foreign national contributions” to the Harris campaign. 
“When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them,” Lawkowski said recalling the American war of independence which ended British control of New England in 1783 and wittily adding that
  “It appears the Labour Party and the Harris for President campaign have forgotten the message”.
Be that as it may it’s added a new angle to the Trump campaign’s efforts in the race to the White House and it’s embarrassed Starmer – who’s had to backtrack to cover himself in case Trump actually wins.
While American elections are keenly followed by those in the British ruling class who believe Britain’s global imperialist interests are best served under the protective wing of the United States the outcome makes no difference to British workers who have no say in the vote and no influence on the outcome.
Kamala Harris’ Democrats still believe in the ‘new world order’, though they now prefer to call it “globalisation”. Trump, on the other hand, represents circles in the Republican Party who want to cut back US military expenditure in Europe and north-east Asia so that they can concentrate on controlling the global energy market by taking over the entire Middle East and restoring US imperialism’s hegemony over south and central America, He says he’s in favour of a rapprochement with the Russians. But when he was last in the White House he remained a prisoner of the most aggressive circles within the American ruling class.
In the USA American communists are divided. Some traditionally endorse the Democrats – a liberal bourgeois party that is supported by a section of the American labour movement. Others will be backing protest candidates standing on anti-war or ecological platforms while a tiny fraction even argue in support of Trump on the grounds that he’s stated his willingness to end the war in Ukraine.
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck and neck in the opinion polls. No one can safely predict the outcome of the November poll. What is certain is that neither candidate poses any threat to the interests of America’s ruling circles.

Hobson’s Choice

The American presidential election is being viewed with increasing trepidation in Westminster and the other chancelleries of Europe. Not surprisingly considering the choice facing the electorate – a senile old man in thrall to the most aggressive and venal sections of the American ruling class or Donald Trump, whose calls for trade wars and tariffs could easily trigger a global slump not seen since the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
Though Trump is ahead in the opinion polls at the moment that could easily change if the movers and shakers in the Democratic Party dump Joe Biden in favour of a new leader to face the challenge in November. Many favour Michelle Obama, a lawyer and author, whose only claim to high office is that she is the wife of President Barack Obama and served as the First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. Needless to say the views of bourgeois politicians this side of the Atlantic will count for nothing in their calculations.
Gone are the days when British politicians on both sides of the House could pose as equals to their American counter-parts and talk about a “special relationship” with US imperialism. Gone – like the dream of the Franco-German bourgeoisie of an independent European Union that could play off East against West or the nonsensical “Third Way” of the Blairites which, in itself, was just another version of the Keynesian economic model pioneered by Fascist Italy and the Third Reich in the 1930s. 
In the old days British imperialism bragged about the Empire on which "the sun never set" while the German imperialists talked of "world domination". United States imperialism has always been more subtle. After the Second World War it made a bid to control the economic development of the world through the Marshall Plan and its dominance of the fledgling United Nations. This was thwarted by the opposition of the Soviet Union and the new people's democracies. During the Cold War much of the world was divided between the rival spheres of influence of the United States and the USSR. However the end of the Soviet Union enabled the United States to reinforce its grip on Western Europe.
Western European leaders still pose as equals of the Americans in the NATO alliance but in reality they’ve been forced to accept the model of subservience imposed on Japan by US imperialism after its defeat in 1945.
Dependent on American protection to defend their own global interests they destroyed the Yugoslav federation and the Libyan Jamahuriya at Washington’s behest. They fan the flames of war in Ukraine and the Middle East and prolong the unhappy partition of many countries including Cyprus, Ireland, Kashmir and Korea.
Now all they can do is watch as the drama of the race to the White House plays out. Whether Michelle Obama can mobilise the same rainbow coalition that swept her husband into the White House in 2008 is another matter. Biden’s blanket support for Israeli aggression has alienated Arab-Americans as well as large sections of the Black and Muslim community that has traditionally supported the Democrats in the past. Whether they will return to the fold will ultimately depend on Biden’s departure and a more even-handed approach to the Palestinians in the run-up to the election.

All smoke and mirrors

Quite why the Foreign Office has chosen to leak details of secret talks with the Russians at this time remains a mystery to the bourgeois media that unquestioningly published the story earlier in the week.
These sort of clandestine talks were, of course, the norm during the Cold War.  Hot lines and secret diplomatic exchanges via go-betweens in neutral countries remained open during the height of the imperialist confrontation with the Soviet Union. Vital links for spy deals, prisoner swaps and back-door channels to avoid misunderstandings that could rapidly escalate into a nuclear war that neither side could win. But if we are to believe the Foreign Office the only matters raised with the Russians at a number of covert meetings around the world were on routine issues of grain supplies and nuclear safety. These are issues that could usually be dealt with at ambassador level. They certainly would not normally justify covert liaisons in all sorts of places like New York and Vienna.
The Foreign Office is at pains to stress that at no point has the UK sought to enter peace talks around finding a diplomatic end to the conflict. If so what was the point of all these cloak-and-dagger meetings?
We can only guess at what was on the agenda but one thing’s for sure, and that is that the British envoys were acting as errand boys for the Americans. Though the Americans have been quite open about their own talks with the Russians they like to use trusted allies, like Britain and Japan, to raise issues without compromising their own position  in advance of any future direct negotiations.
Though Boris Johnson liked to pose as the man who persuaded  the Ukrainians to go for total war and break off peace negotiations with the Russians last year everybody knows that Johnson was only doing the bidding of Joe Biden and the American war-lobby which has used the conflict to tighten their grip over all their European allies.
Ukraine is essentially a protectorate of US imperialism. A vassal state that fights with NATO’s guns and lives on imperialist aid only keeps up the fight because the war is still in the American interest. 
No-one, beyond the chosen few in America’s ruling circles, knows what Biden’s war aims are but he’s clearly has got most of what he wanted when the war US imperialism provoked broke out in February 2022. NATO has taken over the once neutral states of Scandinavia. Russian gas and oil exports to Europe have been cut and US imperialism is now supreme in the UK and the European Union. It has come at a price that has largely been paid in blood by the hapless Ukrainians. But it has also cost the American tax-payers plenty in billions of dollars-worth of military supplies that can never be repaid. Now that bill is coming under scrutiny in the run-up to the next US presidential election.
Donald Trump is on the come-back trail claiming he could stop the Ukraine war in a day by talking directly to Putin. On the other hand the Democrats, still unsure on whether Biden is capable of fighting the next election, want to concentrate on their domestic reform platform which they believe will secure them a second term in office. They need a cease-fire to stop this becoming a campaign issue. But only time will tell whether the Biden administration is now ready to seriously talk about ending the war.

 

A step in the right direction

 When the United States openly called itself the leader of the “free world” American leaders were raised to Churchillian heights in the bourgeois media. General Eisenhower was, of course, a famous war-time commander who led the Anglo-American advance into Nazi Germany during the Second World War. A halo of sanctity surrounds John F Kennedy and the Carters, Clintons and Obamas are regarded as role-models for the “American way of life”. Ronald Reagan and the Bush family are praised for their supposed leadership during the Cold War. Even Richard Nixon gets a look in these days.
But what can they say about Joe Biden, an octogenarian US president who barely knows which day it is, facing a not much younger Donald Trump preparing to make a come-back while fighting criminal charges in four jurisdictions.
Last week Biden was at the G20 summit in India. President Xi Jinping of China and Russia’s Vladimir Putin gave it a miss. The Chinese delegation was, instead, headed by Prime Minister Li Qiang and the Russian by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as Putin could not travel to New Delhi because of the ludicrous “International Criminal Court” warrant for his arrest on trumped-up charges of “war-crimes” is valid in India. 
But they still got the better over the leader of US imperialism at the conference which ended with a joint statement that pointedly avoided any criticism of Russia over Ukraine. The  Zelensky regime had hoped the Americans would give them another cheap propaganda victory at  this international economic forum that consists of 19 major countries, including China, Russia, India, the UK and the United States as well as the European Union and the African Union. The final declaration, the Ukrainians said, was “nothing to be proud of”. 
But the Biden team were realistic. They went along with the consensus that merely noted "the human suffering and negative added impacts of the war in Ukraine with regard to global food and energy security". It was, as Sergei Lavrov, said, a “turning point” and a “landmark” decision.
The West had failed to ''Ukrainianise'' the summit declaration. The  final agreement on the wording was "a step in the right direction".
The G20 is being transformed from within by members from the Global South, with the West failing to hijack the intergovernmental forum’s agenda to focus on the Ukraine crisis, the Russian Foreign Minister said. 
Lavrov also touched on the declaration’s inclusion of important concrete objectives, like reforming traditionally Western-dominated institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and the need for the US and its allies to fulfill the obligations and promises made to the Global South, like technology transfers and financial support.
A new wind of change is sweeping the world as millions upon millions of people throughout the Global South rise up against Washington’s new world order. Another world is possible but it is not the European Union or the American dream of world domination.  A new and better world ia coming – the world Marx and Engels predicted and a world that will surely come to pass. It is already being built in the people’s democracies of today. It is now being fought for in every continent and every country.

Of mice and men

Neo-con American hawk John Bolton is hitting the headlines again railing against his old boss and saying that Donald Trump’s  behaviour is “erratic, irrational and unconstrained” and that Trump will likely take the US out of NATO if he wins the presidential race in 2024. If only it were true...

Bolton is a career politician. Trump, on the other hand, is a property tycoon. Trump was quite happy to do the bidding of the American Establishment whose views he generally went along with. He didn’t realise that he was just a pawn of the reactionary circles who had propelled him to the White House in the first place. 

When Trump branched out on his own – arguing for cuts in the global US military presence and working for a rapprochement with Democratic Korea – his plans were sabotaged by his own senior advisers.

When Trump sacked them – and that’s something the president can still do – another stepped in to fill the gap.  Men like John Bolton, appointed Trump’s National Security Advisor in 2018 and sacked in 2019. Bolton has long been a tool of the “deep state”  –  the hidden hand of the most aggressive sections of the American ruling class that want war and “regime change” in countries that dare to stand up to American imperialism.

Bolton said that when Trump was in the Oval Office he undermined Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. E says Trump would betray Ukraine if again returned to the White House.

In the Republican camp some, like Bolton, are trying to derail Trump’s comeback campaign. They don’t particularly favour the others seeking nomination on the Republican ticket. But they clearly see Trump as a troublesome maverick, an unreliable element whose private life and dubious business ethics are an embarrassment even by American standards. They’re working to ensure the re-election of  the Democratic candidate. And Joe Biden is clearly a tool of the deep state. 

At the end of the day it makes no difference who wins the US presidential elections. Bourgeois elections are held so that the smallest number of people  can manipulate the largest number of votes. There can only be one winner in that sort of race…

For whom the bell tolls…

 Last weekend millions in Japan and throughout the world paused to remember those who died in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the last days of the Second World War. On 6th August 1945 Hiroshima was destroyed by an American atom bomb. Nagasaki was hit three days later. Some 250,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed instantly in the atomic blasts. Many more would later perish from flash burns and radiation sickness.

The claim that the atom bombs forced Japan to surrender is an enduring myth of the Second World War. The Americans say they had to use the atom bomb to force Japan to surrender and bring the global conflict to an end. But the Japanese were begging for an armistice as their armies folded under the hammer blows of communist-led guerrillas  and the Red Army. 

But two Japanese cities were still wiped out to show the world, and the Soviet Union in particular, what US imperialism was capable of doing.

The fight for peace is inexorably linked to the struggle for justice. The campaign must inevitably challenge world imperialism, the greatest threat to peace. and present an alternative to the capitalism that is the root cause of all conflicts in the world today.

Biden renews struggle for US dominance

Joe Biden called on American workers to back him in his successful fight to topple Donald Trump. The march of the most reactionary and racist elements of the US ruling class and the degenerates they mobilised to build the Trump movement has been stopped – at least for the time being – by the mass movement that grew from the Black Lives Matter movements and the rage on the street at the Trump government’s indifferent response to the COVID-19 pandemic that is sweeping through the USA.
    Now in the White House, Biden has begun to tackle the coronavirus plague that was criminally ignored by the Trump administration and is launching a massive two-trillion-dollar plan, the biggest since the New Deal, to create new jobs and provide living wages to workers in marginalised communities.
    In the global arena however, Biden clearly wants to continue where his predecessor, Barack Obama, left off – to restore US hegemony throughout the capitalist world and lead a global imperialist front to confront Russia and People’s China.
    The American Establishment hasn’t abandoned the dream of world domination that it once called the “new world order” or “globalisation”.
    Biden says he wants America to lead “by the power of our example”, but what this means in reality is simply using its military and economic might to force other countries to do the bidding of US imperialism.
    The US-led economic blockade of Cuba, Iran and Democratic Korea continues, and new sanctions have been imposed on Russia and China. American dollars prop up puppets in Ukraine and the Caucasus and the reactionary separatist movements in Hong Kong and China.
    Now the greedy eyes of the hawks in Washington are once again focusing on Ukraine. The US imperialists are supporting the Kiev puppet regime’s bid for NATO membership.
    The Kremlin says that any Ukrainian move to join the imperialist alliance would destabilise the whole region. But Russian warnings have, as usual, been ignored.
    Tension is rising along the cease-fire line in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainians are stepping up their provocations in breach of the Minsk agreements that were supposed to end the fighting and pave the way to a negotiated settlement that would recognise the legitimate rights of the people of the Donbas.
    Ukrainian forces using prohibited weapons are targeting civilians, schools and homes in violation of international law and regional ceasefire agreements. Only last week a Ukrainian drone strike killed a five-year-old boy and wounded his 66-year-old grandmother.
    In preparation for the escalation of hostilities the Kiev regime has begun to release neo-Nazis, previously arrested for crimes such as murder, torture and robbery, to join the hard-core fascist units that prop up the puppet regime. On the front-line the Ukrainians are deploying heavy weapons, tanks and artillery, and similar movements are clearly evident on the other side. The armies of the Donbas people’s republics are also on full alert amidst reports of a Russian mobilisation along the frontier.
    The imperialists think that they can scupper the soon-to-be-completed Russian natural gas pipeline to Germany by provoking a new war in the Donbas. But they are playing with fire. A major offensive by the Kiev regime against the Donbas people’s republics could swiftly lead to direct and deadly confrontation between NATO and Russia.

So long Dominic Cummings

As the Trump era ends in acrimony in Washington the waves of discontent ripple across the Atlantic. None of us will shed a tear at the departure of Dominic Cummings or his shadowy side-kick Lee Cain from the corridors of power. The loathsome Rasputin-like adviser who seemed pull all the strings in the Johnson government has now gone. Some say that this is largely down to disagreements with Boris Johnson’s partner, Carrie Symonds. Others suspect that the ousting of two of the most prominent Leavers in the Tory camp has more to do with Johnson’s need to appease the new Biden administration.
    Boris Johnson knows that Joe Biden’s victory means the end of his dream of trans-Atlantic free-trade deal to replace the Treaty of Rome. The Brexit transitional period ends at the end of the year and without an agreement with Brussels Johnson’s options, within the parameters set by the ruling class, are limited.
    A “no deal” Brexit would clear the decks for free trade agreements with People’s China, India and Russia that would easily off-set any losses sustained from departing from the European Union. But there’s little enthusiasm within the Establishment for anything that could jeopardise British imperialism’s existing relationships with American and Franco-German imperialism.
    Cummings, whose departure was welcomed by the Tory grandees, stood in the way of any reset of the British position toward the European Union. Now he can write his book…

Corbyn’s reinstatement

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party membership has been restored in return for an appeasing statement following efforts by Unite and some left social-democratic MPs to end the crisis. The Corbynistas say this is a climb-down by Sir Keir Starmer, Corbyn’s ineffectual successor, and a victory for the Labour left. But this “victory” came at a price and it was hardly decisive.
     Instead of challenging the reactionary nonsense of the Zionists and Blairites Corbyn plays into his enemies’ hands when he says that “concerns about anti-semitism [within the Labour Party] are neither ‘exaggerated’ nor ‘overstated’”. But even that isn’t enough for the Blairite bloc that want him and all his followers out of the Labour Party. Corbyn remains excluded from the Parliamentary Labour Party and the hate campaign will continue reaction unabated.
    At every step of the way, the left around Jeremy Corbyn have refused to challenge the basis of the accusations or defend the right to speak out for Palestine. Instead they have made concession after concession, and apology after apology.
    Rank and file opposition to the Blairites and Zionists inside the labour movement is the only way we can combat the lies and filth of the bourgeois media.
    Marxists have always repudiated the theory and practice of Zionism. In1903, Lenin himself said that the concept itself of a Jewish nation had become a “Zionist idea absolutely false and essentially reactionary”.
     The Bolshevik leader exposed the reactionary essence of Zionism, emphasising that its dogmas are reactionary, false and contrary to the interests of the Jewish proletariat. He criticised the Zionists’ theses concerning the unique nature of the Jewish people, the alleged absence of class differences amongst the Jews and the imaginary communality of their interests, explaining that such assertions aimed to distract the Jewish toiling masses from the proletariat’s common class struggle. Lenin was right then and he is right now!

The Ugly American

Donald Trump sits in the White House refusing to face reality as power ebbs away to Joe Biden, the victor in last week’s US presidential elections. Biden’s victory may not be a great advance for the American people – he is after-all a trusted pair of hands who can be relied on to do the bidding of the American establishment – but it certainly was a defeat for Trump.
    Implausibly depicting the Democrats as dangerous “reds” and playing the race card Trump pulled out all the stops in the last days of his campaign to get the Republican vote out. And though he succeeded in mobilising record numbers of supporters throughout the country the Republicans were overwhelmed by even larger numbers who hate Trump and all that he stands for.
    Trump’s apologists in Europe are mainly found amongst the ranks of the far-right along those deluded “left” poseurs who defend him on the grounds that he, unlike his predecessors, didn’t start any new wars during his four years in the White House. This is, in fact, true. What is equally true is that Trump did nothing to halt the conflicts he inherited from the Obama administration.
    American troops still occupy parts of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. Trump tightened the blockade against the Islamic Republic of Iran and restored many of the sanctions that Barack Obama lifted when he established diplomatic relations with Cuba. His summit talks with Democratic Korean leader Kim Jong Un may have slightly reduced tension on the Korean peninsula but in the long term that achieved nothing because Trump was unwilling or unable to deliver on any of the steps towards normalisation that he promised to take at these high-level meetings.
     Trump sanctioned the assassination of General Soleimani, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander killed in a targeted US drone strike in January and threw his weight behind a bogus Middle East peace plan to allow Israel to illegally annex Arab Jerusalem and other parts of the occupied West Bank coveted by the Zionists.
     While no-one expects much from Biden we can expect some change of direction next year. Some fear that Biden will continue where Obama left off in Syria and Ukraine. But though the shadowy figures within the US that the Americans call the “deep state” will undoubtedly be clamouring for more “regime change” Biden’s first priority must be to tackle the coronavirus plague that is sweeping unchecked throughout the USA.
    The president-elect says another of his priorities will be to revive the Iran nuclear deal
and return to the other international treaties that Trump recklessly tore up during his term of office. If he does that will go some way to easing tension in the Middle East.
    No one is going to miss Trump in the region apart from Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader who was backed to the hilt by the Trump administration, and a handful of feudal Arab oil princes who will in any case do the bidding of US imperialism regardless of who sits in the Oval Office at any given time.
    But there may be trouble ahead for Boris Johnson. Biden’s already warned Johnson that he can kiss goodbye to his “Treaty of Washington” trade deal if Brexit undermines the Northern Ireland peace process and the Remainers are hoping to exploit the new situation to prolong the Brexit transition period or even replace Johnson with a more Europhile leader.
It doesn’t augur well for Johnson in the next few months.

Hobson’s choice

 We’re now into the campaign season of US politics and as the spin from both wings of the American ruling class drifts over the Atlantic the pundits of our venal media try to make sense out of the lies and smears coming from the Republican and Democrat camps.
    Last weekend the Trump administration’s Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, claimed that the drop in the unemployment rate to 8.4 per cent in August and the addition of 1.4 million jobs was evidence that the American economy is recovering from the worst of the turmoil inflicted by the coronavirus plague.
    “The American economy is rebounding,” Mnuchin said, adding that Donald Trump “is going to get it back. The economy is continuing to recover, and we won’t quit until everyone is back to work”.
    But this was ridiculed by Senator Kamala Harris, the running mate of Trump’s Democratic rival, Joe Biden, last weekend. She described Trump as “an abject failure and incompetent” in handling the economy during the pandemic and said Trump only gauges how well the economy is doing “on how well rich people are doing”.
    While that’s undoubtedly true much the same could be said about the Democrats. The Biden camp have made no substantial promises to American workers in this election. Biden talks about tackling the coronavirus pandemic which The Donald has done little or nothing to halt. But he’s got no plan to end the health care crisis. Biden has even said that as president he would veto a Medicare for All bill, should one reach his desk. His campaign is essentially simply a call to get rid of Donald Trump.
    Trump, of course, is a deeply divisive figure who has enraged millions of American workers by his support for racist cops following the upsurge on the street after the Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in May. Nor is he a man of peace.
    Trump’s track record may not be as bad as Obama’s or that of the Bush clan. Trump did break the deadlock with Democratic Korea with face-to-face talks with Korean leader Kim Jong Un. But what little he promised he failed to deliver.
    Trump supports Zionist Israel, and its oppression of the Palestinian Arabs, to the hilt. He’s stepped up the blockades against Venezuela and Iran and launched a trade war against People’s China. US troops are still in Afghanistan, Iraq and northern Syria. American dollars have financed the reactionary cliques that have come to power in parts of Latin America in recent years while US ‘military advisers’ prop up feudal Arab tyrants and Ukrainian reactionaries.
    Joe Biden’s no better. Biden criticises Trump for being soft on China and Democratic Korea. He supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the attempts to overthrow the Venezuelan government and, like Trump, he’s a staunch supporter of Israel.
    America’s communists are divided. The Communist Party USA and the Freedom Road Socialist Organisation are supporting Biden to get Trump out while others, like Workers World, believe that the only campaign that really matters is on the street.
    Trump and Biden are neck and neck in the opinion polls. No one can safely predict the outcome of the November poll. What is certain is that neither candidate poses any threat to the interests of America’s ruling circles. Whether the massive wave of unrest that is sweeping America at the moment can provide the basis for a militant, working-class resistance to the capitalist class in the United States remains to be seen.

In the summertime when the weather is hot

If you thought the hype around the re-opening of the schools had heralded the end of the silly season you were sadly mistaken. Over the last few weeks we had more gossip about Prince Andrew, the usual Loch Ness monster sighting, “strange lights” in the Horsham skies in Sussex, and some nonsense about Boris Johnson’s three day staycation in a tent in the Scottish Highlands. But amongst all this tat was a curious story that has renewed speculation about the Prime Minister’s long-term future.
    According to the Times, the father-in-law of the Prime Minister’s senior adviser says that Johnson has not recovered from his bout of coronavirus and is on his way out. Sir Humphry Wakefield, whose daughter is married to Dominic Cummings, the éminence grise of the Johnson government, apparently told a visitor to his Chillingham Castle home that Johnson was still struggling badly and will quit in six months. The Times says that Sir Humphry, a racing man, said: “If you put a horse back to work when it’s injured it will never recover.”
    Boris has, of course, dismissed this story as “absolute nonsense”, telling the press that he was feeling “if anything, far better as I’ve lost some weight”. That remains to be seen. What is known is that speculation about Johnson’s health started doing the rounds soon after he left hospital in April. Stories about Johnson’s alleged inability to concentrate, his long weekends and “three hour” siestas have been circulated gleefully by the Remainer camp who think they can sabotage Brexit at the last moment by pulling the rug from under his feet. A few months ago that would have been dismissed as wishful thinking. Now with the prospect of Donald Trump losing the US elections in November, these stories seem to be gaining a broader traction – and it’s got nothing to do with Johnson’s health.
    Boris’s plan to replace the Treaty of Rome with a new ‘Treaty of Washington’ will be in tatters if Democratic hopeful, Joe Biden, takes Trump’s place. There’s no personal affinity between Biden and the man The Donald called “Britain’s Trump”. In any case, the Democrats would want Britain to remain in the European Union  as an American investment hub in the heart of Europe. President Obama personally made this clear during his talks with former Prime Minister David Cameron in London prior to the referendum.
    If Trump goes then all bets are off. Johnson banked his political future on Trump’s re-election. That seems more and more unlikely as the days go by. 

where angels fear to tread

This week the British government joined in the imperialist chorus of support for their chief Russian stooge Alexey Navalny, who was allegedly poisoned in the Siberian city of Omsk last week. The bourgeois media calls him the leader of the Russian opposition but he’s nothing if the kind.
    The Duma, the Russian parliament, is dominated by Vladimir Putin’s United Russia bloc and its allies. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) with its 43 MPs are the official opposition. The Duma has 450 MPs. Navalny is not one of them. In fact every party Navalny’s led has failed to win a single seat in the Russian parliament.
    Russian doctors found no traces of poison when they examined Navalny. German doctors, who are now treating Navalny in Berlin, say he probably was poisoned. Well, we’ll see. It is, nevertheless, curious to note how well the Navalny saga fits into the new anti-Russian media hate campaign drummed up to justify imperialist intervention in Belarus.