Sunday Posts

There are times in politics when being in opposition isn't a bad thing. With Brexit tearing the Tory Party, and with it, politics as usual, apart, Jeremy Corbyn feels lucky to be sitting on the opposite side, watching the hapless Prime Minister trying to achieve the unachievable. So far, he has played the usual political game of obfuscation, never really taking a stance, letting the Tory Brexit fall apart on its own. Self-consciously, he stood up every day at the PMQs and got through it never really challenging the Prime Minister on the subject, almost making the point that her incompetence is self-evident.  It was a clever stance. It is hard to do what-ifs, but one can possibly argue that Corbyn's lack of stance unleashed the Tory civil war in full view. The political calculation of the Labour front bench was perhaps to enjoy a period of calm, after all the Blairite sniping of the past couple of years, and keep everyone guessing. Without this, Jacob Rees Mogg...

As Brexit starts to bite, the politics of it has come alive again.  There are some clear signs that the British economy has started cooling. In a way, the experts were right: We have started paying the costs of Brexit. Indeed, they were wrong at the same time - the effects are slowly beginning to emerge, rather than appearing as a morning-after apocalypse. But it is inescapable that a long winter is around the corner. This makes the politics of Brexit come alive again. The Remainers suddenly see a light, as the Leavers' claims are exposed as hoaxes and lies, and the economic effects of Brexit become clearer. Their moods are a combination of 'I-Told-You-So' and denial, as the weak and unstable government proves itself to be clueless about how to deal with Brexit. Suddenly, leaders who bailed out - David Miliband, for example - are back in conversation, urging the MPs to push for a second referendum; there is talk of leadership changes, and even of a new party of Re...

 UK General Elections are over.  It is hard to say who has won. The Party with most seats in Parliament is looking very much the loser, and the Party which came second, now three elections in a row, is arranging Victory Parties. The Prime Minister, who is likely to continue, seems to have lost; the Opposition Leader, who would not perhaps get to try to form the Government, seems to have won. It is equally intriguing to figure out who really have lost last night. Indeed, the mood, in a particular section of the population, is all doom and gloom: They are going on TV and proclaiming that the country has lost in a whole. They are looking at the hung parliament and claiming that it is a bad thing, because markets don't like uncertainty. That is obviously nonsense: Markets exist because they are the most efficient mechanism to price uncertainties, and if everything was certain, we wouldn't need markets at all. And, indeed, if they are trying to tell us that we should ha...

Here are five main reasons I shall vote Labour, in UK General Election due on 8th June. First, the Conservative Government under Theresa May is, contrary to its claim, neither strong nor stable. If it was so, we did not need an election at all. The Government had a majority, secured in an election only two years ago. Implicit in Ms May's claim of 'Strong and Stable' is indeed an admission of lack of strength and stability. And, if anyone thought a Conservative Victory in the elections will make Ms May strong, one must remember that it would also encourage the Brexit lobby of the Conservative Party, thereby making the Government more weak and wobbly. Second, this has been a government of U-Turns. Even in the short stint that Ms May had as Prime Minister, she proved herself too fond of making U-Turns. The most spectacular of all U-Turns was, of course, breaking the Fixed Term Parliament law, something that the previous government - in which Ms May was a Senior Membe...

When facts change..  I enthused when Labour Party chose Jeremy Corbyn as its leader. It promised an escape from politics as usual, a break from the smooth-talking career politicians who came to dominate the Labour Party. It heralded an age of authenticity, which was missing from the politics of the left. A break, finally, I thought, from the weather-cock politics of the Blair-Cameron era! Indeed, it was too good to be true, and I did not trust the Labour Party to change. A Blairite revolt was on the card, and it came almost immediately as posh politicians refused to serve in the shadow cabinet. Almost unbelievably, though, it never stopped - resurfaced again and again, whether in eagerness to bomb Syria or to overturn the members' mandate on the pretext of Brexit - and continued to demonstrate how Labour Party has become an apparatus without a purpose. While the career politicians ploughed on with the fantasist argument that someone else, who the Labour members won't ...

The UK Supreme Court's ruling that the Houses of Parliament must have its say in UK's invoking Article 50 caused trouble, yet again, for Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour Leader, just as our Prime Minister, seems to love the 'Have Your Cake and Eat It Too' options, and now, he is keen to let go of a chance to have a proper debate about the wisdom of Brexit. Mr Corbyn was a reluctant remainer, just as Mrs May was, in the summer's referendum. For all those who supported his elevation as the Labour Leader, including myself, Mr Corbyn was supposed to represent a new kind of politics: One of conscience, as against the reed in the wind policies of career politicians. However, his stances on Brexit, in summer and now, have been totally devoid of courage and conscience, and now, in its latest form, has become totally cowardly.  To be fair to Mr Corbyn, he is one of those old Socialists whose antipathy to EU comes from its basic nature as a Capitalist institution. For him,...

Or, 20 days that shook Britain, one could say! With the Prime Minister moving out, and the most xenophobic and incompetent Minister of his Cabinet earning the job by an astonishing double-default - first failing to campaign for the side she was backing and then by a House-of-Cards show with her potential challengers killing each other off - this is surely an extra-ordinary time. If only this was all! Across the aisle, Labour MPs have set themselves up for a farce, as a befitting aftermath of the tragedy of Brexit. They first bring a 'no confidence' motion on their leader, ignoring one of the most crucial distinction - that Labour leader is chosen by the party members and not the MPs - between Labour and the Tory party. Then, they try to trigger a 'leadership challenge' and keep the current leader off the ballot, with an extra-ordinary excuse that this leader fails to connect with Labour voters and therefore, if he is on the ballot, he may win! In all, Brit...

So, it is out now: The Little England has spoken, decisively, clearly, xenophobicly. This morning is when the penny drops, the Islamophobia triumphs in undoing the post-war understanding that the so-called 'Western World' was made on. With the all-night commentary, political drama, uncertainties and expectations, this is indeed like a General Election, except that, it wasn't: It was a revolution that one lives through, hopefully, once in a lifetime. I am not trying to be analytical - the broader tensions between globalisation and nation state is explanation enough - or to try to envision the future, because it is too uncertain. Right now, in a hangover after a sleepless night, my world is being turned upside down. This is not because of the volatile markets - I am sure these risks were factored in and it will settle in a short time -  but because, I think, this event changes the way I think of politics. For example, I can not believe that I am already missing Davi...

I predicted Jeremy Corbyn to be a different type of politician, and he indeed turned out to be one. He stood steadfast, somewhat in defiance of public opinion, for what he believed in. His was a lonely stance though, as the career politicians that surround him squirmed and fretted to do what they do best - power play without regard to what their constituents want. So, in a little over two months after his landslide victory in Leadership elections, we see headlines of MPs revolting against his leadership. He may survive another week, may be another month - but it seems that the knives are already out for him. I voted Labour in the last election, but did not sign up for its membership. I must admit I was tempted and spent time filling out a membership form, just after Mr Corbyn was elected (and a few times before that, as I wanted to vote for him) but decided against it - as, I wrote on this blog, I could not trust Labour to follow through. It is a party of Blairite career politici...

Jeremy Corbyn has won the Labour Leadership election with 59% of the votes. After the darkness of May, suddenly it is the season of hope again in Britain. Many people are calling it the biggest upset in British political life in many years, and they are right. No one was expecting a 66-year old, steadfastly socialist outsider to win the leadership of a party, which has all but lost its ideological roots and connection with people they represent, under the years of careerist New Labour. It has become, over the last twenty years, a party of sartorial ambitions, smooth accents and middle class obsessions, a party which is sustained by the promise of cheaper mortgages than the hope of social equality. At every turn, under the excuse of being Centrist, the Labour Party became a pale shadow of the Thatcherite conservatives, offering no alternative in the election of 2015, where a coalition legacy of the middle-of-the-road policies won the day for the Conservatives who took the credits ...

Tony Blair says a Corbyn win would annihilate Labour. Failing to elect him as the leader would do so too. Blair misses the point that the sanitized, undifferentiated party that he helped create in 1990s is now irrelevant. This is one of the problems with change - that it does not stop. Today, after 9/11 and its wars, recession and Greece, the world is a difference place than it was in 1990. The politics must be different, too. The triumph of centrism, as witnessed in the decades since 1970s, was not the end of History. An opportunity was provided and missed, as the lack of working class activism was used by the powerful to advance their agenda of marginalisation, inequality and power-grab. The moment may be now, or in the future, but the push-backs have now started.  It comes just after the Tory win in the UK, but it should not surprise anyone. We should be able to see beyond Tory win and Labour loss. The Labour lost for two reasons. One, because the Lib-Dems got anni...