our bleak future

Some of you came away from the demonstration on Saturday all hopeful and that. Then you got home and decided that the anarchists had all ruined it by being all violent and that. You got your denounce and condemnathon on, thus reinforcing the media narrative that the march was marred by ultra-violence and therefore the main problem is how violent all these extremists are.

You're wrong though. In fact, it was you guys that ruined March 26th. That's right, you bastards, peacefully walking around and then listening to Brendan and Ed on the platform, politely applauding, you ruined everything.

Because, you know what's going to happen now? This scumbag government, this bunch of thieving, lying, spiteful evil bastards, they'll get steadily less and less popular over the years. They might have a few high points, if they invade somewhere, or we pull out of the recession, but, eventually, they'll end up being incredibly unpopular. We'll have another election, and guess what, the other bunch of thieving, lying, spiteful evil bastards will win.

And by that time, it'll be too late. They'll have pushed through their latest expropriation of public assets, and they'll be gone. The process of ransacking the country and turning it over to the financial sector will be a bit more advanced. The new government of thieving, lying, spiteful evil bastards won't reverse it. Just like they didn't reverse the damage that Thatcher's thieving, lying, spiteful evil government did. It'll all stay there. It'll be there forever.

Because all three groups of thieving, lying, spiteful evil bastards worship at the same altar of neoliberal capitalism, and it's a dogma, it's a dogma that doesn't suffer heresy. You follow the words to the letter: you liberalise, you cut regulation, you privatise, you cut services, you cut taxes, you take away rights and keep people down. You do it faster or slower depending on the circumstances, but it's a process and they're all signed up.

So that's what'll happen, we'll peacefully march from A to B to various rallies, and in the end, we'll get to where Eddy M wants us to be, so desperate for an end to Tory government that we'll agree to anything to get the neoliberal Labour Party back into power.

Because you're angry. You're angry at the cuts and at the Tories. But you're not angry at the past 30 years of economic policy and you're not angry at the 13 years of Labour government. You're not angry at the whole political class for systematically turning the country - the world - over to high finance. You're certainly not going to demonstrate your anger (as opposed to your disapproval) by resisting (as opposed to demonstrating said disapproval).

And what you will end up with is another neoliberal government, managing the process of neoliberalism.

Europe moves right aka social democracy´s death-throes

The marquee social democratic parties in Europe are all fucked. The Party of European Socialists lost nearly a quarter of their seats in the last election and they were already a small minority in the European parliament. Look a bit deeper than that and you see that the big guns just fell apart; Labour Party 15.7% Parti Socialiste 16.5% SPD 20.8%.

In the three biggest European economies, all of which have governed their country (more or less) independently in the past, not one could convince in excess of a quarter of the electorate. The party still clinging to power in the UK did the worst, but the PS (in opposition) and the SPD (a junior partner in the governing coalition) did no better.

In fact, almost no PES affiliate Europe-wide actually came out of the Sunday as the largest party in their country (Greece, Malta and Denmark being the only exceptions), and only in a handfull did any of them poll more than 30%.

Now if it were in a few countries, then maybe I might think these had political explanations, just the usual toing and froing between the mainstream parties. But as a Europe-wide trend then it looks like the social democratic centre left could be going extinct.

Beneath the individual afflictions of different parties is their an underlying reason in our society for these parties to be drowning in the sea of history?

What sustained these parties over the course of the 80s and 90s was a mixture of things; the persistence, emotionally if not socially, of their historical base - the mass industrial working class - and the main other one was an ability to appeal to liberal-minded centrists in some sort of opposition to social conservatism and the worst excesses of neoliberalism. They succeeded by being a nicer version of the conservatives and hoping their traditional support didn´t notice.

Eventually of course their traditional support was going to notice that they were doing very little (if anything) in their interest, and either desert them, or (in the case of the younger generation) never turn to them in the first place. And the thing about all those centrists is that they´re fickle as hell, so they wander off as soon as something nicer and shinier comes along, or whenever it looks like this lot aren´t managing capitalism very well.

In the midst of a recession the problem gets exarcebated, because it´s their support that´s suffering, and they´ve nothing to tell them. Once you sign up for neo-liberal consensus there´s not a great deal you can do to support working people in a recession. So when it´s obvious the system isn´t working and you refuse to help people in any significant way, they start to leave you in even greater numbers.

With conservatively-minded people, especially economic, their support stands up even under globalisation and recession, because basically it doesn´t challenge any of their core beliefs. The problem are scrounging shower at the bottom, or, the mass of impoverished people who have now stopped voting. Your support base stays in tact and just asks that you do the same things only harsher. They wait for capitalism to sort itself out.