The imminent election as the Leader of the Labour Party, and
putative UK Prime Minister, of loony-Leftist Jeremy Corbyn will make for a
great comedy and probably ensure another Tory win in 2020. In Greece, nominally
Leftie Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has been doing handsprings and back
somersaults to keep inside the Eurozone and to outmanoeuvre 25 dissidents in
his own SYRIZA parliamentary group. He has called for new elections for 20
September which should rid him of his extreme Marxist millstone and allow the
government of Greece to be carried out in a more-or-less rational manner (some
hope!).
Struggles between the factions of the Left tend to be
blood-and-thunder affairs and if a climax involving an ice-pick รก la Trotsky is unlikely these days, we
can be sure the brothers will be anything but fraternal and there will be none
of the politely hypocritical “after you, Rupert” which characterises Tory
power-pitches. Jeremy Corbyn is a throwback to a much earlier Labour generation,
wanting to nationalise the commanding heights of the economy, sack the Governor
of the Bank if he declines to print money to order, disarm unilaterally, end
Osborne’s mild version of austerity and soak the rich. Even Michael Foot would
have swallowed hard before promulgating such an insane programme, containing
elements of Red Clydeside and envious trades union triumphalism.
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| Jeremy Corbyn rallies the faithful
The coronation of Jeremy seems inevitable in a shambolic
election marred by entryism and chicanery – mind you the other candidates
Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall (who? who?) hardly set the pulses
a-racing. Labour seems to be succumbing to a death wish, shrinking into a
dismal sect like the erstwhile Tribune Group or even The Levellers.
|
And yet……Politics is a notoriously unpredictable business
and elections are a lottery if the public is fickle. Expect the unexpected –
the SNP swept Scotland earlier this year, maybe Corbynmania will one day
afflict the South like an outbreak of rabies or St Vitus Dance and the bearded
wonder will be adored by the WI in Surrey and in the banking parlours of
Moorgate. Stranger things have happened.
40 economists, including Danny Blanchflower, ex-Bank of
England, have supported Corbyn’s anti-austerity stance, which they describes as
“mainstream”. The same kind of economic accolade was bestowed on Tsipras’
defiant policies towards the Eurozone by two Nobel laureates and Tsipras duly
won his referendum denouncing austerity. Yet within days he realised that
kissing the hem of the robe of Wolfgang Schaeuble was a price he had to pay to
stay within the Euro and he duly abased himself. Tsipras and his demonised
Finance Minister Yannis Varoufakis may well have been “right” but the rest of
the Eurozone were unpersuaded and surrender to the majority was unavoidable.
In Greece Tsipras remains very popular. He is admired for
standing up to rich Europeans and his failure is seen as almost heroic. Reforming
Greek pension schemes, cutting state spending and tackling the omnipotent
oligarchs can maybe only be done by a relatively clean man of the Left like
Tsipras. Hope remains that substantial Greek debt will be written off, a pet
scheme of Varoufakis and now of Christine Lagarde from the IMF. Schaeuble may
revive his idea of Greece “temporarily” leaving the Euro if this were to be
done – a good Grexit deal in my view but not one with appeal to the Greek
electorate.
The Greek political landscape is fragmented. The
conservative New Democracy has an uninspiring interim leader Meimarakis,
socialist PASOK has a new unknown lady leader and is weak, Potami is terminally
ineffective – only the new SYRIZA splinter party Popular Unity, led by
firebrand Panagiotis Lafazanis (another beardie!) with 25 members has much
talent but their policies of leaving NATO, cosying up to Russia and the Arab
world, nationalising the banks and dismantling capitalism are electoral poison
and make Corbyn sound like Abe Lincoln. Popular Unity will simply disappear.
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| Radical Leftists Tsipras and Lafazanis |
So I believe Tsipras will win the forthcoming election and
will move more clearly towards Social Democracy. He may need a new coalition
partner (Greeks do not easily do compromise) but he could give Greece the
stability it has lacked in recent years. There are serious questions to answer
all over Europe – how to narrow the gap between the very rich and the others,
how to cater for an ageing population how to deal with mass immigration from
the East – and above all how to get Europe economically prosperous again. Let
the politicians show their mettle!
SMD
24.08.15
Text Copyright ©Sidney Donald 2015
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