Meet the Tory candidate who wants to euthanise the unemployed

We all know there are a lot of right-wing people out there who secretly think that the Nazi concentration camps were a great idea, but that few of them are actually stupid enough to actually come out and promote Nazi-style eugenics in public, because they know the idea of state-administered murder of political non-conformists, ethnic minorities, disabled people, and so-called 'degenerates' fills most normal people with horror and revulsion.

One right-winger who is actually stupid enough to publicly promote the idea that people on benefits should be sent to death camps is the new Tory parliamentary candidate for the Gower constituency in Wales, Francesca O'Brien.

We're all aware of how "poverty porn" shows like Benefit Street were designed in order to whip up public hate against people who rely on benefits to survive, and to justify the Tory ideological agenda of vandalising the welfare state.

O'Brien is clearly one of the shows' target audience, because after watching an episode in 2014 she went onto Facebook to declare that the people on the show needed "putting down", and then endorse a reply proposing a "twat a tramp Tuesday".

Someone actually proposed a campaign of public beatings for homeless people, and instead of calling it out as vile vigilante nonsense, O'Brien responded "I'm liking that idea ... ha ha. Made me laugh"!

O'Brien has subsequently deleted the vile comments in the pathetic belief that the Internet will just forget the fact that she's some kind of hateful far-right ranter from the Britain First school of social media discourse.

And the Tory party have indicated how far they've moved to the extreme-right by continuing to endorse this vile woman as their chosen candidate.

yes they've spent the last nine years driving millions into absolute destitution with policies like sanctions, the benefits freeze, wage repression, disability benefit cuts, disability denial assessments ... but now they're unapologetically standing a candidate who says the state should go even further than systematically hounding disabled people and driving vulnerable people into starvation and suicide, and actually just kill them.

Let's hope the people of Gower have the good sense to reject this awful woman, and elect someone who has never actually proposed Nazi style eugenics, or laughed about vigilante violence campaigns against the homeless.

If she loses her bid to become an MP and then falls on hard times because of employers' understandable reservations about employing someone with such vile views, perhaps one day she might learn just a little bit of humility and decency?

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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Boris Johnson goes full Mussolini

It's an extraordinary and iconic scene.

As MPs battle to undo Johnson's hard-right, parliament-shutting, disaster capitalist coup plot, Tory HQ actually decided that it would be a good idea for him to go and stand there in front of a load of police, as a visual demonstration that he may not have the backing of the people or parliament, but he still has the full power of the state behind him.

Obviously this kind of belligerent hard-man posturing is going to play brilliantly with the far-right ultranationalist Blue-Kip demographic that Johnson is so obviously intent on pandering to, but by ruthlessly expelling the Tory moderates for doing the right thing the other night, and now going full Mussolini for the cameras, he's brazenly sticking two fingers up at the kind of "keep calm and carry on" middle Englanders who traditionally voted Tory.

This is the imagery of hardcore British nationalism, and it's tailored to appeal to those of the far-right authoritarian disposition: The kind of people who want parliamentary democracy shut down if it means getting their own way, and revel in ruthless state repression of non-violent political dissent.

The Tory party was once a broad church, where comfortably wealthy middle Englanders, economically right-wing privatisation maniacs, and those of more extreme-right dispositions rubbed shoulders, wary of each other, but united in the joint purpose of transferring as much wealth and opportunity as possible from the ordinary majority, to the already-wealthy minority.

But Brexit fanaticism and the rise of Johnson has coincided with a savage ideological purge of the middle Englanders from the Tory ranks, and this piece of Mussolini-style authoritarian posturing is a clear message that the Tory party is now heading down a much more sinister path.

Photo shoots like this don't happen by chance.

The optics of an embattled wannabe hard-man leader surrounded by uniforms will have been carefully considered by Tory strategists and PR wonks.

They know perfectly well that the message they're sending is as much a direct provocation to those who object to the Tory lurch to the far-right as it is delicious manna to heaven to the far-right ultranationalist Blue-Kip demographic they're so desperately pandering to.

But they've done it anyway, because fetishisation of the power of the state and divisive "with us or against us" posturing is staple fare for ideological fanatics.

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OR

Beware of people using bad faith delegitimisation tactics

Before we even get started let's be absolutely clear that I'm not saying centrists are the same as the modern day extreme-right. I'm not doing that, so don't even dare try to misrepresent my point to pretend that I am.

Yes centrists wilfully collude with the extreme-right in preference to working with the left, as in the Lib-Dem pact with UKIP to take control of Bolton Council, or the Centre Party's fateful decision in 1933 to seal their own destruction by elevating Adolf Hitler to German Chancellor. And yes both ideologies revere capitalism. But nobody is pretending that they're the same.

What I am going to point out is that centrists and the modern day extreme-right have a tendency to use the exact same cynical debating trickery to delegitimise their critics, or anyone who dares question the groupthink of their ideology.

The extreme-right continually present their critics as being motivated by hatred of Britain and hatred of (their utterly warped interpretation of) "British values". They also regularly claim that opponents of their ideology are the victims of "brainwashing".

Centrists use the exact same tactic, repeatedly insinuating that criticism of their beloved ideology is motivated by hatred, bitterness, or insanity, and delighting in the accusation that anyone supporting the anti-austerity, anti-privatisation, pro-investment politics of the Labour left is a "cultist".

If you don't believe our propaganda, you're 'brainwashed'.

If you don't believe in our unquestionable centrist groupthink, then you're a 'cultist'.

It's the exact same delegitimisation tactic, and it's absolutely commonplace in both ideologies.

The point of it is to deter people from even considering the critique of their own ideology by labelling the critic as dangerous, unstable, insane, brainwashed, motivated by hate, or whatever other slur they can think of.

They don't want people actually debating the topic at hand, so they concentrate all of their effort on delegitimising the source, in the hope that others will not even bother looking into what the argument is actually about.

It's the tactic of bad faith cowards who know that they'd lose the argument if the debate was conducted fairly and decently, so they resort to cynical delegitimisation trickery to prevent that from happening.

Lib-Dems

I think it's important to criticise the Liberal Democrats for their role in helping the Tories enforce the living standards destroying austerity fanaticism that laid the groundwork for Brexit, then cashing in on the crisis they helped create by posing as glorious saviours who are going to rescue us all from the madness by ... errr ... printing up "Bollocks to Brexit" T-shirts" and begging for another referendum with no deal Tories running the show so they can totally rig the ballot by picking the options, wording, and timing of the vote to their own advantage.

It doesn't matter how much you base your criticism on facts, evidence, logic, and links to verifiable sources, the Lib-Dem response in the comments always consists of the same barrage of evasions, deflections, straw man misrepresentations, whataboutery, excuses, absurd Lib-Dem fairy stories, outright lies, and cynical delegitimisation tactics.

The strategy is to deflect debate away from the actual criticisms, and undermine the critic with claims that they must be insane, brainwashed, hysterical, deluded, or motivated by hate to even dare trying to criticise the ideological groupthink.

Ian Dunt

If you're not on Twitter you probably won't be familiar with this guy, but he's hot shit in the centrist and Remainer echo chambers like FBPE.

He's one of these noxious Remain Ultras who gets off on sneering at left-behind working class communities (rather than reaching out to try to explain that the living standards collapse they experienced was caused by domestic austerity fanaticism, not immigrants and the EU), smearing all Leave voters as horrible right-wingers, and constructing bizarre fantasies that the UK was some kind of magnificent utopia under the Tory/Lib-Dem Austerity Coalition, before Brexit arrived, out of nowhere, and ruined everything.

He's a toxic Remainer who does more damage to the Brexit-sceptic cause with his wittering than good, and if other Remainers had any vague understanding of the strategic need to actually attract people to the cause rather than driving them away with toxic groupthink nonsense, they wouldn't revere and retweet him so god-damned much.

So the Guardian columnist Dawn Foster wrote an exceptional article in the Guardian criticising the Labour deputy leader Tom Watson for his campaign of internal wrecking tactics, and having a dig at the kind of centrist groupthink that Dunt and his ilk absolutely revel in.

Obviously Dunt hated it, but his Twitter response was absolutely telling.

Instead of critiquing any of the actual points raised in the article, or presenting anything even remotely counter-evidence, he resorted to ridiculing it as "off planet" insane, before questioning the fact that the mainstream media would allow such opinions to be published at all!

1. Refuse to debate or critique any of the actual points raised, simply deride opposing opinions as insane "thought crime".  

 2. Demand the mainstream media only ever promote the 'correct' groupthink worldview. 

 How is this mentality any different from the mentality of the far-right?

How is it even remotely possible to consider this kind of delegitimisation of non-conformist views, and craving for media censorship as any kind of liberalism?

Conclusion

As I said in the introduction I'm not arguing that centrism and the extreme-right are the same thing, so don't even try to pretend that I am.

What I'm saying is that their ideological adherents are prone to using the exact same delegitimisation tactics to deter people from even listening to their ideological opponents.

From deriding non-conformist opinions as insane, or deluded, or hate-motivated "thought crime" to demanding that the function of the mainstream media is solely to endlessly and unquestioningly repeat their own approved groupthink mentality.

Their politics may be different, but the illiberal and intolerant mindset, and the cynical debating trickery are very often exactly the same.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

The self-awareness deficiency of the common British street thug

In case the news passed you by, the extreme-right hate preacher Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley Lennon) has been found guilty of contempt of court for ignoring court reporting restrictions, and risking the collapse of three interlinked child sex abuse prosecutions, despite having been previously warned to stop ignoring court orders.

Instead of taking it on the chin, admitting he screwed up, and accepting the judgement of the British rule of law, the treacherous little shit-weasel has resorted to attacking the most senior judge in the English and Welsh legal system as a "liar", and begging Donald Trump for political asylum in the United States!

The lack of self-awareness of this self-styled patriot is extraordinary.

His actions demonstrate that he doesn't actually love Britain or British institutions at all. He hates our justice system and our rule of law, and he seeks to flee the country entirely when things go against him.

There are of course a few problems with street thug Tommy's appeal for asylum in Trump's America. 

The main problem being that he's banned for life from the United States for fraudulently entering the country on a false passport.

Another glaring problem is that his convictions for violent assault and his public boasting about Class A drug use mean that he should definitely be refused entry at the border.

And then there's the sheer hypocrisy of it.

Just imagine the uproar Tommy and his rabble would make if a foreign hate preacher had been thrown out of Britain for life for entering on a fake passport, then cheekily put in an appeal for asylum to the British government to escape being jailed in their own country.

They'd be going absolutely ballistic about it.

But because it's their beloved street thug behaving in this extraordinary way, they're actually rallying around to support him, and repeating his pathetic sob stories about how being punished for his own unlawful behaviour makes him the poor innocent victim of political persecution.

Another problem for Yaxley-Lennon is what to do with all of his property he's invested in, using the donations from all of the absolute dupes who throw so much cash at him?

Surely if he flees Britain in order to evade justice, it must be possible to seize his property, which would provide an excellent opportunity to turn his luxuriant £1 million countryside mansion in Bedfordshire into a refugee hostel until he decides to come back from hiding and see out his sentence?

But the most glaring issue of all is the absolutely barefaced demonstration that Yaxley-Lennon is no patriot at all, to the point of hating and repeatedly undermining our judicial system, then begging a foreign leader to step in and rescue him from the consequences of his own unlawful actions.

This treacherous behaviour gets down to a deeper truth: Claims of patriotism from the modern extreme-right are an absolute fraud.

Theirs is an internationalist movement, in which they're far more likely to adore a misogynist bully like Trump, or an extreme-right harridan like Marine Le Pen, or a murderous extreme-right terrorists like the Christchurch mosque killer or the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, because of their shared political ideology, than they are to even tolerate and respect their fellow countrymen who happen not to share their extremist views.

The truth is that it's all about ideology to extreme-right agitators like Yaxley-Lennon, and the flags of the nations they happen to inhabit serve as nothing more than convenience to them. As visual bait to lure in the kind of mindless unthinking idiot who imagines that as long as it's wrapped itself in the national flag, then it unquestionably has to be a true patriot.

But even as Yaxley-Lennon trash-talks the British judicial system and begs to become a migrant in a foreign land to escape the consequences of his own actions, the hard-of-thinking will continue throwing their cash at him, because easily-duped idiots will always behave like easily-duped idiots.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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The national shame

Today was the opening of the 9th European Parliament, and oh what a farce the British contingent turned it into!

We've come to expect nothing more than pointless publicity-seeking pantomime from the Faragists, who love nothing more than empty gesture politics, grandstanding speeches, and collecting £millions in expenses in return for doing no work whatever. So it's absolutely no surprise that the 29 Brexit Party MPs turned their back on the European Parliament during Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

These ludicrous scammers have continually shamed Britain with their endless expenses frauds, their laziness, their belligerence, their petulant publicity-seeking stunts, and their despicable allegiances with extreme-right fanatics and neo-Nazis.

The kind of people who vote for them actually enjoy seeing our European neighbours treated with contempt and disdain. They get off on it because they hate Johnny Foreigner so much they'd rather have a bunch of attention-seeking clowns in the EU parliament than people there to actually represent British interests on the continental stage.

But us Brits didn't just decide to send even more of these far-right scammers into the European Parliament, we also upped the British contingent of Lib-Dems from 1 to 16 based on their opportunistic single-issue "Bollocks to Brexit" campaign!

It's highly unlikely that a tenth of the people who voted for these appalling Lib-Dem austerity enforcers understand that they're part of Guy Verhofstadt's awful ALDE group in the European Parliament, or that ALDE and their antics are one of the worst things about the EU for the way they relentlessly back every sickening piece of hard-right, economically liberal, pro-corporate shite from TTIP, to efforts to ban people from using the term "veggie burger", to link taxes and upload filters designed to benefit corporate media sites and online tech giants at the expense of small websites and independent content creators.

It's also highly unlikely that most of the people who decided to vote Lib-Dem actually bothered to think through why Brexit happened in the first place, nor the crucial role the Lib-Dems' played by actively helping the Tories to destroy our nation's living standards for five ruinous years with austerity fanaticism, unprecedented wage repression, massive public service cuts, endless privatisation scams, grotesquely illiberal legislation like unlawful Tribunal Fees, Hostile Environment, Bedroom Tax, and Snooping Powers, deliberate infrastructure under-investment, and wanton vandalism of the social safety net.

Let's vote for the people who helped cause Brexit because they make a fuss about opposing Brexit!

Let's give our kids ice cream for destroying their bedroom because they say they intend to tidy it up one day!

What Lib-Dem voters must surely have noticed is the way the people they elected turned up to the European Parliament in absurd matching "Bollocks to Brexit" T-shirts like it's a sodding stag do rather than a serious parliament.

Turning up dressed like you're on the piss with Auntie Susan turns the EU Parliament into just as much of a joke as the Brexiteers and their absurd antics.

So that's 45 of Britain's 73 MEPs treating the European Parliament like an absolute circus.

This puerile and contemptuous behaviour from both fringes of the Brexit divide shames our nation, and makes it seem like the Europeans would actually be a hell of a lot better off without us sending ever larger numbers of absolute divs into their parliament to piss about like they're on holiday.

So thanks a lot to all of you single-issue wankers who decided to turn the European elections into an absurd Proxy-referendum on Brexit.

And thanks a lot to the almost 2/3 of people who couldn't even be arsed to go out and vote to decide who represents us on the continental stage too, this level of apathy is what has allowed a small and unrepresentative bunch of fringe single-issue extremists to completely hijack Britain's contingent in the European Parliament, and end up making us look like a nation of total dick heads.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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The BBC's outright hypocrisy over racism

When Danny Baker Tweeted a picture of a chimp dressed up like an aristocrat in reaction to the royal baby coverage, he was quite rightly criticised.

He later apologised and claimed that he was trying to lampoon inherited privilege, and hadn't even considered the racial connotations, but by then it was too late for him, he'd already been sacked by the BBC.

Having listened to Danny Baker's shows many times in the past I've never heard him say anything remotely racist (it's mainly irreverent nonsense) and given his long broadcasting history of never saying anything even remotely racist or bigoted, my opinion is that his apology should be taken in good faith.

The problem of course is that the BBC's decision to sack Baker betrays barefaced hypocrisy.

You only have to look back to Alan Sugar's brazenly racist Tweet about the Senegal football team last year to find a completely different approach from the BBC. Sugar was completely unapologetic about his racist Tweet, and the BBC somehow decided not to sack the star of their hit show The Apprentice.

Either the BBC's attitude to racism has developed extremely quickly from allowing unapologetic racists to get away with it last year, to sacking people for racist-looking Tweets now, or there's something else at play.

Maybe the BBC considers social media racism to be perfectly fine when it's aimed downwards, at nations like Senegal, and at African beach vendors, but when it's aimed at the royals, even inadvertently, it's an instant sacking offence.

This kind of Nazi-style racism is considered
fine and dandy by the BBC.

Then to exacerbate the hypocrisy on the very evening that Danny Baker was sacked they invited Nigel Farage onto their flagship Question Time show for a record 33rd time. 

Despite Farage's long history of making racist comments about Romanians, using Nazi style propaganda to attack refugees, aligning with outright fascists in the European Parliament, whipping up anti-Muslim sentiments, and wilfully spreading the extreme-right white supremacist "great replacement" conspiracy theory, he's always welcome in BBC studios.

And then there was the time that they invited the extreme-right hate preacher Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) onto Newsnight for a softball interview on the very day one of his acolytes was jailed for a murderous terrorist rampage in Finsbury Park.

And then there was the time that the BBC invited leader of the Generation Identity hate group onto Newsnight on the very day one of their followers had carried out the mass killings in Christchurch, New Zealand.

And then on the day after Danny Baker's sacking, the BBC invited the right-wing polemicist Ben Shapiro onto their Daily Politics show, despite his history of anti-Muslim hatemongering, his racist comments about Arabs, his constant spreading of far-right conspiracy nonsense like Obama birtherism and the Nazi-derived cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, and the fact he inspired the extreme-right terrorist who carried out the Quebec City Mosque shooting (who obsessively viewed Shapiro's Twitter output).

 

If Danny Baker's Tweet was so offensive he had to
be barred from the BBC, why isn't this?

The BBC's warped explanation for platforming Shapiro was to boast about how many Facebook and Twitter followers he has, as if his popularity is somehow a shield against his repulsive political views, and his dangerous extreme-right conspiracy-mongering.

Of course the BBC's 'he's got loads of supporters' argument could have been used in favour of inviting Hitler onto the BBC in 1939, or the murderous Chilean dictator Pinochet in the 1980s, or Osama Bin Laden in the 2000s.

This facile 'he's popular so we have to give him a platform' argument also creates the impression that if Danny Baker had had a few hundred thousand more followers on social media, perhaps he wouldn't just have not been sacked, but he would have actually been invited onto flagship BBC politics shows to talk about his distasteful Tweet!

It seems that if you're an out-and-our racist or an extreme-right polemicist with a long history of spreading racist ideas and far-right conspiracies, the BBC are clamouring to invite you on their shows to help you to widen your profile, and if you're a star of one of their hit shows and you aim your despicable social media racism downwards and then outright refuse to apologise for it, that's perfectly fine too.

But woe betide you if the royal family are the subject of your ridiculously ill-considered Tweet.

I'm not trying to argue that Danny Baker is blameless, or that he didn't deserve criticism for what he Tweeted.

What I'm saying is that the BBC's hypocrisy is absolutely undeniable if they sack him over what he did despite his long broadcasting history on non-racism, and his apology, while they continue to wilfully platform unrepentant racists, and extreme-right polemicists like Alan Sugar, Nigel Farage, 'Tommy Robinson', Generation Identity, and Ben Shapiro.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Don't believe the mainstream media over-hype about Vox

In the buildup to the Spanish General Election elements of the UK press, especially the BBC, were absolutely determined to talk up the prospects of the far-right party Vox.

But as the results came in a lot of mainstream media hacks failed to adjust to the actual reality. Vox only bagged 10% of the vote and finished 5th, and there were a lot of other extremely important stories, several of them much bigger than the extreme-right gaining a foothold in the Spanish parliament for the first time, but somehow the media continued their fixation on Vox.

In this article I'm going to run through a few of the stories and issues that got lost behind the Vox hype.

PP's worst result ever

Partido Popular are the Spanish version of the Tories. They're the shockingly corrupt, pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, anti-worker, right-wing establishment party who have switched power with PSOE ever since the end of Franco's fascist dictatorship in 1975. They ruled Spain in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, imposing ruinous austerity, overseeing huge unemployment rates, attacking workers rights and individual liberties, and creating an unprecedented exodus of the younger generations who spread across Europe looking for work and opportunities.

On Sunday 28 April 2019 they suffered by far their worst electoral result in their history, collapsing from 32.6% of the vote at the last election in 2016 to just 16.7% and 66 of the 350 seats.

To put the scale of this defeat into perspective their previous worst result was in 1989 when they got 25.8% of the vote and 107 of the seats.

In the UK we can only dream of the Tory vote collapsing in half, and them returning to parliament with less than 20% of the seats in parliament.

PSOE win

PSOE are like the Spanish version of Labour, they're significantly to the left of the PP, but in recent decades they've failed to really live up to the "socialist" name, often opting for Blair-style neoliberalism-lite. They'll generally protect workers and champion socially progressive causes, but when it comes to rolling back privatisation and reversing tax handouts for the mega-rich they're nowhere near living up to their socialist name.

28.7% of the vote and 123 seats in Congress is a long way from the best performance in their history, but since 2014 Spanish politics has fractured from two main parties to five, and finishing 12 points above their nearest rival under these circumstances is not bad at all.

123 seats is still well short of a majority, but it's such a comprehensive lead over their rival parties that it's inconceivable that they won't form the next government.

PSOE majority in the senate

PSOE fell short of winning a majority in congress, but they secured a clear majority in the Spanish senate with 139 of the 265 seats, their first senate majority since 1989, and their best senate performance since they won a senate landslide in 1986.

A first left-wing senate majority in three decades is clearly a huge story, but one that's flown under the radar in a lot of mainstream media coverage, thanks mainly to all the Vox hype.

Ciudadanos

One of the major reasons for the collapse of PP was the rise of the right-wing Ciudadanos party which formed in Catalonia in 2006, but only really became a party at the national level in 2014.

After absorbing most of the anti-independence vote in the 2017 Catalan regional elections to become the single biggest party in the Catalan parliament, they were projected to do very well in the next General Election, but they've fallen back significantly since their peak in mid-2018 when they were actually leading in multiple polls on almost 30%, to finish in 3rd on 15.9%.

It's still technically the best result in their short history, but in light of the spectacular PP collapse, and where they were in the polls just a year ago, a modest 2.8% increase in their vote is clearly an under-performance.

With 57 seats a PSOE-Ciudadanos coalition is mathematically possible, but highly unlikely given the unpopularity of their leader Albert Rivera with PSOE supporters.

Unidas Podemos

Despite forming a political alliance with another left-wing party (Izquierda Unida) Podemos has fallen back significantly from their high point in 2016 to finish in fourth place with 14.3% of the vote and 42 seats.

Unidas Podemos would have been the most likely coalition partners for PSOE, but they dropped so many seats that even together they're still well short of a majority.

There are many reasons for the Unidas Podemos fallback, including former-PSOE voters going back to their previous allegiance, a lot of bitter public infighting between different internal factions, and some ridiculous behaviour from their leader Pablo Iglesias.

All is not lost though, because although 14.3% of the vote is a poor result compared to their achievments in 2015 and 2016, it's only a fraction behind PP in second, which is hardly terrible for a political party that was only formed in 2014.

Vox
 

Vox are a far-right ultranationalist party that were founded in 2014 by defectors from the ruling PP. Until this election Vox had won nothing at the national level, just a few seats in regional elections.

Bagging 10% of the vote and 24 seats in congress represents a significant stride forward for the extreme-right in Spanish politics, but in reality they're only slightly to the right of PP, they're just more open and overt about their bigotry, misogyny, extreme-right politics, and desire for the centralisation of political power in Madrid than the establishment right-wing party they split away from.

10% is clearly better than the 0.2% they achieved at the previous election, but anyone trying to make out that the story is all about them when 90% of Spanish voters rejected them, and they finished in fifth, with fewer seats than the Catalan Independence parties, is clearly pushing an agenda, rather than reporting the news.

Results in Catalonia

There are two ways of looking at the results in Catalonia. From an independence perspective, and from a left-right perspective.

The left-wing pro-independence Republican Left group won the most votes and most seats for the region.

It's difficult to argue that their popularity hasn't been driven by the fact their leader Oriol Junqueras has been held as a political prisoner by the Spanish state since 2017.

And it's also difficult to argue that a party led by a political prisoner taking a massive historic win isn't a huge story that should at least have got a look in instead of the Vox over-hype.

Anti-independence PSOE came second in Catalonia and the more neutral Podemos group in the Catalan region slipped to 3rd, meaning all three of the most popular parties in Catalonia are on the left or centre-left.

The right-wing Ciudadanos party had an absolute disaster coming in 5th, less than a year and a half after coming first in the Catalan regional elections.

PP collapsed to 6th place bagging just 4.9% of the Catalan vote, meaning that they're essentially a dead political force there, which is hardly surprising given their former leader Mariano Rajoy's ridiculously arrogant and incompetent mishandling of the independence issue back in 2017.

Coalition or minority government?

Since PSOE and Unidas Podemos have fallen just short of enough seats to build a majority, they'll need support from smaller regional parties. The Catalan Republican Left party have 15 seats, but it's unlikely they'd collaborate without significant concessions, including the possibility of an officially sanctioned Catalan independence referendum.

The other option is for PSOE to go it alone as a minority government, then call another general election if the opposition parties vote down their budget again. Obstructionism would be a bold move from the likes of PP and Ciudadanos given that the political momentum is with PSOE.

It's hard to see how PP and Ciudadanos wouldn't be punished by the electorate if they forced the Spanish people into a 4th General Election in the space of four years through obstructionist tactics.

The Spanish right is split

It's often the case in politics that splits in the opposition end up handing power to the political right, but in Spain in 2019 the right has splintered into three (PP, Ciudadanos, Vox), while the left vote is divided between two (PSOE, Unidas Podemos).

The reason PP have collapsed so badly is that their vote is being eroded from both sides. Vox have pinched 2 million+ votes from PP by pushing far-right ultranationalist bigotry, while Ciudadanos have pinched a significant proportion of "centre-right" PP voters.

Between the three right-wing parties they bagged 42.9% of the vote, which is only a slight decline on the 45.8% the three parties' combined vote at the last General Election in 2016, but because the right-wing vote is more evenly divided between three right-wing parties, rather than being concentrated mainly with PP, they've fallen even further short of building a right-wing coalition.

Conclusion

Elements of the British press really wanted Vox to do well because "fascism is rising again in Spain" is a story they can really hype. The far-right did indeed bag a foothold in the Spanish parliament, but 10% is significantly below people's worst fears, but the UK media seemed unable to adjust their footing, drop the far-right overhype they wanted to present, and cover other significant and historic aspects of the election.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

There is literally no reason to vote Tory

There is literally no reason to vote Tory in the upcoming European Parliament elections (you know the elections that Theresa May previously swore that the UK wouldn't be participating in).

No matter what kind of political perspective you have, there's now clearly a better choice for you:

Orthodox neoliberal + Brexit sceptic

If you're a traditional pro-privatisation, pro-austerity, orthodox neoliberal who used to consider the Tory party home, but you're sceptical about quitting the EU then you can vote for CUK or the Liberal Democrats.

CUK have clearly indicated their pro-austerity stance by handing  their economics spokesperson role to Chris Leslie (one of the core architects of Labour's disastrously uninspiring pro-austerity agenda at the 2015 General Election).

They've also indicated their pro-privatisation credentials by appointing Angela Smith as their transport, energy, and environment spokesperson (she's a lobbyist for the privatised water industry).

The Lib-Dems spent five years in coalition with the Tories enforcing the ruinous austerity policies that trashed our living standards and caused the wave of public anger that carried the Leave vote narrowly over the winning line in 2016.

They also helped the Tories introduce all kinds of bonkers hard-right privatisation scams including flogging off the Royal Mail property portfolio at a fraction of its real value, the shambolic privatisation of the probation service,  the Eurostar sell-off, the privatised forensic science service shambles, privatisation of thousands of taxpayer-funded schools, privatised prisons chaos, flogging off the aviation fuel supply network and then renting it back for 10 years at three times the sale price, the sale of every fire engine in London for two pounds ...

If you love austerity and privatisation but have your doubts about Brexit, there are much better choices than voting Tory.

Orthodox neoliberal + Brexit supporter

If you adore the pro-privatisation, pro-austerity, anti-worker, neoliberal ideology and want a hard-right Brexit at any cost, then the Brexit Party definitely seem to fit the bill.

Nigel Farage is a Thatcher-worshipping, pro-privatisation, right-winger who has a track record of openly fantasising about the full privatisation of the NHS.

If you want to see Brexit used as a Trojan Horse to trash workers' rights, abolish our environmental laws and food standards, and to privatise what's left of our public land and public services, why would you vote Tory when you can support Farage and the Brexit Party?

Fan of far-right extremism

A significant proportion of Tory MPs have been deliberately trying to attract the extreme-right ultranationalist demographic. From Zac Goldsmith's vile BNP-style London Mayoral campaign in 2016, through Theresa May's unlawful racist "Hostile Environment" abuse of black British citizens, to the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker publicly promoting the German extreme-right and cheering on the sinister activities of an imported far-right youth radicalisation programme from the US, Tories have been working hard to attract extreme-right bigots into the Tory fold.

But if you're an extreme-right bigot why vote Tory when you can vote for a much more brazen far-right operation that continually peddles anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim bigotry, and even supports their candidates when they make "jokes" about raping their female political opponents!

If you want far-right filth, despite the concerted Tory efforts to ramp up the hate, UKIP are now in a totally different league.

Anti-austerity + Brexit-sceptic

Maybe you're a former Tory voter who has recently woken up to the fact that austerity was always a con job designed to transfer as much wealth as possible from the majority of people to the mega-rich elitist class (you know, the economic class who completely bankroll the Tory party).

And maybe you're also dismayed at the Tories for abandoning the European Union and the Single Market that they helped to create in the first place?

Well if you're after an anti-austerity Brexit-sceptic party, then look no further than the Greens (or the SNP in Scotland/Plaid Cymru in Wales).

Anti-austerity + soft Brexit

If you're a Tory voter who has eventually come to realise that David Cameron and George Osborne's austerity agenda was always just a scam to make the poor and ordinary pay the cost of the bankers' insolvency crisis while the Tories showered the mega-rich with tax cuts and handouts, and you think that Brexit should go ahead but in the least damaging form possible, then Labour are offering what you're looking for.

Labour would reverse austerity and begin actually investing in our country and building our future economic potential, rather than doing precisely the opposite. And Labour's policy is to develop a close negotiated relationship with the EU that doesn't involve driving the UK economy off a "no deal" cliff edge or trashing our manufacturing industry with customs checks and causing absolute chaos over the border in Northern Ireland.

Conclusion

Whatever your stance on several of the most important issues of our era (Brexit, Austerity, the rise of the far-right) there's always a better option than voting Tory in the European Parliament elections.

And when it comes to the local elections, why on earth would anyone ever consider voting Tory when they're the ones who have absolutely trashed local government funding since 2010, meaning councils up and down the country are charging much higher Council Tax rates in return for reduced, scrapped, over-stretched, and downright failing local services?

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