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Some points from a speech by Gary Younge
  • Labour produced mugs saying it would be tough on immigration; the Tories produced policies.
  • After more than a decade of war and almost a decade of austerity, social democratic parties across the continent and beyond had failed to develop a programme or strategy that could engage with their traditional bases. They no longer spoke the language of reform but instead containment. Their project, it seemed, was to limit the damage inflicted by international capitalism, not to prevent it less still to reverse it.
  • My guess is that the overwhelming majority who attended that [historical] march [against the war on Iraq] ... voted for the government they were demonstrating against and at least a plurality, including many here, voted for them again.
  • When Lula won the presidency in Brazil on a redistributive manifesto in 2002 the invisible hand of the market tore up his electoral promises and boxed the country around the ears for its reckless choice. In the three months between his winning and being sworn in, the currency plummeted by 30%, $6bn in hot money left the country, and some agencies gave Brazil the highest debt-risk ratings in the world. “We are in government but not in power,” said his close aide, Frei Betto. “Power today is global power, the power of the big companies, the power of financial capital.”
  • “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
  • We see those symptoms today in the fundamentalisms of Mohammad, the military and the market. The war on the poor; and the wars without end.
  • Whoever you vote for, capital gets in.
  • Grassroots movements and electoral wins across Europe testify to the vitality of the left. But until it works out how to exercise power in the interests of its supporters and challenge global capital, any gains will be shortlived.

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