Notes on the News

Gwydion M. Williams

“It’s not that she’s black, but she’s black”

Labour’s Submissive Tendency

Unsuccessful Strife, and Afterwards

Slovakia Dares to Disobey the Anglosphere

Will Trump Dump Kiev?

Snippets

How Russia Was Lost

Trump Endorses Greater Israel

Trump Wants the World: Does the World Say No?

Afghan Failure

Australian decline

Lynching the Audience

“It’s not that she’s black, but she’s black”

I was surprised by Kemi Badenoch winning the Tories’ Members Ballot, preferred to a white male alternative who gave an impression of strength. Did this meant racism in Britain is almost gone?

Sadly not, with the recent strengthening of the Reform party. I checked the polls, neatly summarised by the Wiki.^[A] Reform got 14.7% for GB in the election: less than expected. Polls had given 16 to 21%. And in the next few weeks, also 16 to 21%.

With the new Tory leader, Reform gained. From 22% to as high as 27%. In one exceptional poll they were first.

In Britain, race has never been an absolute. But it was always bias, and this lingers. A non-white leader gets less tolerance. The heading of this section isn’t an actual quote, but it summarises what I assume a significant minority are thinking.

Not the only problem. At 45, she is young for the top job. Though she and Sunak were both born 1980, he looks a lot more mature. He also filled a gap before expected Tory defeat.

And as 2024 ended, there was a widespread feeling that the New Labour / post-Thatcher Tory consensus in Britain had failed. Likewise Bush / Clinton politics.

Trump’s harder-line and less globalist alternative got just short of 50% of US votes, but it has massive power for the next two years: probably losing control of Congress in 2026. But for now, there are huge flows of money to Reform. Similar parties advancing in Continental Europe.

It could even be ‘the strange death of Tory England’. In as far as authentic British Toryism hadn’t already been killed by Thatcher.

If we’d had perfect proportional representation in 2024, Labour might have got 34% of the seats. Liberals 12%. Tories and Reform would have split 38% between them. Labour would probably have dominated a weak coalition, 46% and extras, rather than having its current overwhelming majority. So Labour with its reduced popularity would have a strong interest in changing the system next time. Maybe dominating a coalition that included a weaker Tory party, with Reform too hard-line to find partners.

Labour’s Submissive Tendency

‘Look after the rich, and all will be well’ That was Tony Blair’s surrender to Thatcherism. Starmer is determined to continue it.

They accepted the dogma that real wealth can only be created by profit-making enterprises. And that governments must borrow from private capital if they can’t cover necessary spending with taxes. And that taxes on the rich must be low, or it will blight their unique talents for wealth creation. Be bold by attacking the weak and defenceless.

Many Britons have suffered, because a lot of voters accepted it:

“Low- to middle-income families in Britain are far poorer than their counterparts in western Europe because of sky-high housing costs, according to an analysis by the Resolution Foundation.

“The thinktank said that while prices in the UK were 8% higher than the average in the 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), less well-off Britons were more affected by the cost of housing, which is 44% higher in the UK than the OECD average.

“Higher housing costs in the UK more than offset the benefit of food, another major area of spending for those on lower incomes, being 12% cheaper than the average in those developed countries…

“In a tight market, rents have also been rising in the UK – by 9.1% in the year to November 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.”^[B]

Britain before Thatcher kept housing cheap by an imperfect but highly successful system of Council Houses. Huge errors were made – blocks of flats that French people might have been very happy in, but somehow they overlooked that these were for the least flexible layers of the English population. But such faults could have been fixed without nihilistic destructiveness.

Money flowed to the rich and to small property owners. Less regulations and lower taxes were promised. They thought it wonderful.

In reality, more regulations and taxes, except for the rich. But was there an alternative?

Labour from Blair onwards made the same error that Wilson made in the 1960s. He is over-impressed by the people who currently control much of the wealth of the society as their personal property. In his case, London financiers who made huge profits from Sterling being a reserve currency: an apparently safe place for foreigners to put their money. So he resisted devaluation for far to long. Never expected the floating currencies that have been normal since 1971.

Barbara Castle’s sensible ideas for putting trade union power into a regular form got rejected, partly because Wilson had wasted so much effort and feelings of loyalty on a lost cause. (See photo of Barbara Castle above)

“Amongst its numerous proposals were plans to force unions to call a ballot before a strike was held and establishment of an Industrial Board to enforce settlements in industrial disputes.”^[C]

She was spot on in calling it In Place of Strife. The left-wingers who insisted on further strife were badly mistaken. Especially Trotskyists, who have never had a single positive result since they set themselves up as enemies of mainstream Leninism. And it is also an objective fact that every successful Leninist party from the 1950s has refused to draw a distinction between Lenin and Stalin, seeing both as ruthlessness justified by the mess that mainstream politicians were making of the world. True even of Che Guevara, which ought to shock his admirers, but they manage to stay ignorant.^[D]

Unsuccessful Strife, and Afterwards

The decline and final collapse of the Soviet Union caused a global decline in confidence in socialism. But then the utter failure of Yeltsin’s effort to build a successful Russian capitalism in the 1990s halted China’s drift to less socialism and more capitalism. This continued under Jiang Zemin, though neither he nor Deng wanted to lose control. But inequality had increased.

The trend stopped with Hu Jintao. He’d been promoted as the best candidate within what the Chinese call the 4^thgeneration of leadership. Promoted by Deng and others of the 2^nd generation, overriding the likely wishes of Jiang and others of the 3^rd generation. And Hu in turn could only get second place for his preferred heir, with the newly risen Xi being much harder-line on equality and control.

And it’s working. Economically, China is either just behind the USA or slightly ahead, allowing for goods being cheaper in China and medical care much less expensive. But 2024 also saw China pull ahead of the USA in many areas of technology.

Also a harsher and more authoritarian government, but vindicating the socialist notion that the economy works better when the government can freely override the wishes of the rich.

China also has much less rape. Women wander freely late at night, and need to be warned if they are coming to the West. Rape of foreign women does not happen, unlike many other places in Asia. I assume that women in the West would find this too brutal even if it made them safer. But it’s an example of what the alternatives are.

China also executes some fraudsters. The enormous popularity of the presumed murderer of an executive of a US health executive company suggests that this might get majority support.^[E]

New Labour swallowed the myth of Burdened Billionaires. Wonderful wealth-creators who would make more money for all of us if not taxed or burdened with extra taxes, or even the same effective taxes as middling workers. Who should be freed from whatever regulations they disliked.

A more reasonable understanding of capitalism is that the main benefit comes from people with crazy ideas that a government would probably not risk trying. Much less comes from those who already have their millions or billions: and they try to bully the government into defending their selfish interests. Even covered their gambling debts in the crisis of 2007-8. Remained Devotees of Theoretical Capitalism, despite assets given an inflated value by ‘Truth-Finding’ Free Markets.

For overall economic growth, more than four decades of New Right dominance have failed to improve on what the West achieved in the 1950s and 1960s. Worse, in fact, for Japan and Continental Europe.

We need to start insisting that when Thatcher went beyond being a tough conservative and pushed Radical-Right ideas, she damaged her own cause. Speeded up the long-term decline of Britain.

Slovakia Dares to Disobey the Anglosphere

After Russia pulled out, the Czechs and Slovaks found they wanted to go in different directions. And smoothly split. They had been defined by centuries of separate rule by Austrians and by Hungarians – very different in style, even though that Archduke of Austria became King of Hungary, and was usually but unreliably elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Czech half has since been very Western. The Slovaks, who were the main force behind the sensible Leninist reforms that were tragically crushed in 1968,^[F] have preferred a mix of moderate socialist populism.

Their 2023 Presidential election was won by a Social Democrat who got nationalist support, defeating the pro-Western candidate.^[G] Likewise the 2024 Parliamentary election led to a coalition dominated by two different shades of moderate socialism.^[H]

Having failed to win using ordinary democracy, the substantial pro-Western minority are now trying to force the majority to obey them. The BBC tried hailing it as a struggle for democracy. And have recently been less deceptive:

“Slovak PM accuses opposition of planning coup to topple him…

“Fico has warned of early elections if his coalition allies do not resolve their differences…

“He claimed that a group of US-funded experts involved in anti-Yanukovych protests in Ukraine and more recent demonstrations in Georgia, was already operating in Slovakia. It was being closely monitored by the Slovak intelligence services, he asserted.

“Tens of thousands of Slovaks have demonstrated in recent months against the government’s alleged curtailing of the rule of law and media freedom, the renewal of relations with Russia and a halt in support for Ukraine.”^[I]

The government is willing to hold new elections. The opposition wants to rely on demonstrations. Just like Ukraine 2014 – the existing President offered a new election, and the opposition used a mob to seize power. After which weak centrists were pushed into damaging hostility to pro-Russian minorities.

Will Trump Dump Kiev?

Biden-Harris were happy to fight to the last Ukrainian. And to spend vast sums there, while neglecting needs at home.

A lot of those funds were simply stolen. But the hope was that it would weaken Russia.

Russians do not lightly weaken. They felt betrayed by the way NATO marched east after the Soviet Union in its last days had voluntarily pulled out. Gorbachev and Yeltsin were utter fools, to think that if they were nice, the USA and an increasingly aggressive European Union would be nice in return.

Ukraine was the sticking point.

Ukraine was for centuries a protest against all existing politics, or else a people content to be ruled from Moscow. An east-west split, with the east being liberated from the Ottoman Empire by Moscow’s armies. The west was ruled by Poland-Lithuania, with frequent revolts being crushed after massacres of Poles and Jews. A pattern repeated in both World Wars.

With an accidental new sovereign Ukraine, many wanted to continue friendship with the new Russian Federation. A comfortable life, which Belarus has secured. But the West is outraged that the people of Belarus were not given the option of a Western-funded liar who would have wrecked their society, just as Yugoslavia was wrecked and Russia hugely damaged in the 1990s.

In 2014, Putin sent in troops to secure a secession by the elected government of Crimea. And tried to negotiate autonomy for the Donbass, if a referendum confirmed that a majority still wanted no part of the Orange Revolution.

What happened in 2022 gets called an invasion of Ukraine. Actually it is analogous to the position if the British Empire had intervened to support the Confederacy during the USA’s Civil War. Just as much an internal conflict caused by one region not liking the way the rest of the country was going. Except the Confederacy was also about defending slavery. Both sides had governments overwhelmingly committed to White Racism,^[J] but the North was determined to stop slavery spreading into new territories.

Crimea and the Donbass had majorities hostile to the first Orange Revolution, before normal politics broke down. Before rioters grabbed control in 2014 and polarised politics.

Sn ippets

How Russia Was Lost

“A now-legendary but long-secret 70-paragraph telegram written by the top political analyst at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in March 1994, E. Wayne Merry, criticizing the American policy focus on radical economic reform in Russia, was published in full today for the first time by the National Security Archive”.

“Titled provocatively ‘Whose Russia Is It Anyway? … radical market reform was the wrong economic prescription for Russia, with its history of statist direction of the economy, uncertainty of political transition and extreme challenges of geography and climate. The message described ‘shock therapy’ as so visibly Washington’s program that the devastating austerity already evident in 1994 was blamed on the U.S., and the long-term consequences would ‘recreate an adversarial relationship between Russia and the West.’ Plus, Merry warned, ‘we will also fail on the economic front.’…

“‘Very, very few Russians impart positive ethical content to market forces, and unfortunately more of these are Mafia than economists.’ Merry warned Washington that the radical reformers deserved to lose the December 1993 elections, ‘lost it badly, and lost it fair and square.’ After all, ‘the only way to know what the people want, and don’t want, is to ask them.’”^[K]

What the US did wasn’t even clever wickedness. They must believe the New Right rubbish that capitalism and multi-party politics are natural, and would emerge spontaneously. A failure for this to happen in the real world has enraged them, but made them no wiser.

Trump Endorses Greater Israel

«US President Donald Trump has said he wants Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians from Gaza.

«Trump said he had made the request to Jordan’s King Abdullah and planned to ask Egypt’s president on Sunday, too.»^[L]

Both have refused, but what do they do if Israel starts rounding them up and exports them? At the time of writing (27th January), Trump is getting away with it by dumping Latinos who sought asylum, but were never officially recognised by the US authorities.

And next would come a further clearance of the West Bank.

I always thought it short-sighted.^[M] The fall of Assad in Syria is seen as a grand victory. But what if the new government invites in Turkiye’s powerful army to recover Syrian territory that Israel recently seized?

Trump Wants the World: Does the World Say No?

“Our poll of 28,549 people across 24 countries revealed four things. First, Europeans are almost alone in mourning Trump’s election. Second, many people in other countries seem to see a Trump-led US as a ‘normal’ great power among many in an à la carte world. Third, many also believe the president-elect is committed to ending wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. And fourth, much of the world regards Europe as more powerful than Europeans themselves do. They say the European Union is able to act on equal terms with the US and China”^[N]

Afgh an Failure

“Behind Afghanistan’s Fall, U.S.-Backed Militias Worse Than the Taliban…

“For years, the Americans supported militias in the north to fight the Taliban. But the effort backfired — those groups preyed on the populace with such cruelty that they turned a one-time stronghold of the United States into a bastion of the insurgency. People came to see the militias, and by extensions the Americans, as a source of torment, not salvation…

“The north was expected to be America’s rear guard, a place where values like democracy and women’s rights might have taken hold.

“Instead, it capitulated in a matter of days — the first region to fall to the Taliban…

“For years, the Americans helped recruit, train and pay for lawless bands of militias that pillaged homes and laid waste to entire communities. The militias tortured civilians, kidnapped for ransom, massacred dozens in vendetta killings and razed entire villages, sowing more than a decade of hatred toward the Afghan government and its American allies.”^[O]

Australians decline

“After a record-breaking streak of growth, Australia is lagging behind its peers amid cost-of-living and productivity woes… Unlike every other major developed economy, Australia emerged from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression without going into recession.”^[P]

I blame the New Right dominance. Australia began with sheep and minerals. But manufacturing could have been developed, and was neglected. It was left to private business, but more money could be made elsewhere.^[Q]

Lynching the Audience

Anyone saddened by the death of film-maker David Lynch has had time to recover. So I’ll explain why I won’t miss him.

His 1984 film of SF classic Dune was botched. The original book was a hugely coherent fantasy. Lynch opens with a weird creature called a Navigator, who then seems irrelevant except as a glorified bus-conductor. His messenger re-appears to treat the threatened Emperor as a lackey: the book had interesting and fine-balanced politics.

Lynch also chose for the key charismatic leader an actor who looked unlikely to successfully organise a booze-up in a brewery. An ‘unknown’ who has deservedly remained unknown.

With his death, I got a fuller picture. Ugly images and silly mysticism. And guilty of Mulholland Drive, an apparent thriller where you later find that what you saw happen did not in fact happen.

A silly habit of deciding that reality is whatever you choose to see it as. And despite radical pretentions, very compatible with the errors of the New Right.

Old newsnotes at the magazine websites. I also write regular blogs – https://www.quora.com/q/mrgwydionmwilliams

^[A] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#National_poll_results

^[B] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/13/uk-low-middle-income-families-poorer-oecd-counterparts-study-western-europe

^[C] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Place_of_Strife

^[D] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/the-soviet-past/why-che-guavara-approved-of-stalin/

^[E] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Brian_Thompson

^[F] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/very-old-issues-images/magazine-001-to-010/magazine-007-july-1988-2/the-1968-invasion-of-czechoslovakia-doomed-the-soviet-union/

^[G] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Slovak_presidential_election

^[H] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Slovak_parliamentary_election

^[I] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgr4zrvv4po

^[J] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/52-usa/both-sides-were-racist-in-the-us-civil-war/

^[K] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2024-12-18/long-telegram-1990s-whose-russia-it-anyway-toward-policy