Midway through this summer, a high-quality poll found that Democrats in California were overwhelmingly in favor of the upcoming ballot measure for a one-time 5% tax on billionaire wealth.
The ratio was more than 4 to 1. But the state’s most powerful Democrats – including the governor Gavin Newsom, his near-certain successor Xavier Becerra and the Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass – have lined up with Silicon Valley billionaires who’ve raised upward of $340m to defeat the initiative.
This is a Uk perpctive. The new prime minister has pledged to end decades of neoliberalism (the great concept espoused by Rand, Friedmann, Hayek then Reagan and Thatcher). It is both rare and refreshing to hear any UK PM say any thing like this. I am fearful about the extreme ignorance, simple mindedness, and gullibility of some of the electorate. They are completely blind to the effects of neoliberalism, which is the main guiding force behind the bumptious and odious Farage, and fascist/racist Reform party who believe that competition is the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised; public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve. We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages, such as education, inheritance, and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances. As written in today’s Observer, "People don’t want much. They want someone to love, somewhere to live, somewhere to work and something to hope for.” And Tim Forcer added "That would be a welcome change from much of UK politics, where many promote views that assume we mostly want someone to hate, someone to envy and someone to despise.”
The new Prime Minister who has not run an election as leader of the party and was only chosen to lead the party by a handful of senior MP’s who nominated him - because he stood unopposed the party membership were not given any opportunity to vote on him.
He was voted MP by a Manchester constituency who knew him as the mayor, and then he was voted PM by a handful of MP’s - not by the general electorate nor even the party members.
So what.
So it’s not exactly democratic, now, is it? And yet he frequently harps on about his “mandate”.
Don’t get me wrong I like the guy and don’t know of anyone better, but democracy is paramount to me.
It’s shady as fuck that Starmer stepped down for seemingly no reason in particular, and then Burnham takes over with no democratic vote - especially when two leaders ago Labour had Corbyn, who had overwhelming support from the party base but almost no support at all from wealthy elites. With Burnham, the party base has explicitly been denied their say. It doesn’t pass the sniff test and reeks of backroom deals.